Broken Trust
by AlBhedCecdanc
Summary: A young Detroit Police officer is given a second chance to bring justice to the most personal crime of her career. Rated M for mature themes, violence and gore supplimentary site of character sketches and bios coming soon
1. Chapter 1

SOME TIME AGO

Biondo looked into the deadman's eyes. Only moments ago they had been wide with fear, eyelashes fluttering like startled butterfly wings. Only moments ago the pupils had been pinpricks constricted against the glare of a flashlight that had been shining into them. That was before the man's pleas stopped. That was before Biondo had pulled the trigger.

It still sat across the table from him, the shadows behind it dancing to avoid the only light in the room. The corpse sat there in mockery of what it had been, only seconds before. It still looked like a man. The eyelashes were still moving a bit after all, and blood was still flowing. Through its veins, through its heart. Down the back of its head and into the collar of its shirt. Just like a real live human.

When the thing across the table finally decided to give up its guise of living, it sagged slowly to the left until it fell from the chair and onto the floor of the warehouse with a respectable thump. Vincent Biondo set his revolver down on the table and looked at the recently vacated chair.

"I hate this town. The hired help is for shit."

Two men jumped to pull out Biondo's chair as the old man stood.

"Get, stop, I'm not so old that I can't stand up on my own. Pauly, pick up the damn bags. And for God's sake, someone turn on the fucking lights."

The lights of the warehouse shuddered on row by row, throwing light through the cracked and broken windows into the streets outside. The tall Italian-American called Pauly lifted two small duffle bags from beside the deadman's chair and hefted them to the table. He unzipped each bag and poked a finger inside. "Hey, the shit's all here, boss."

"Of course it's fucking here, Pauly. Rubino was a dumbass, but he wasn't that much of a dumbass. His best bet was riding on bringing the stuff and hoping my old age would bring temperance and mercy. Let this be a lesson to you to never gamble. Those risks are for our customers, not us. We gotta be smart, get me? Do I have blood splatter on me? I hate blood splatter."

"Naw, boss. You're clean."

Biondo's second man returned from his quest for the light switch with his hand behind his back, clutching his pistol. He was looking around nervously as though the old, rusted fenders were going to jump down off the shelves and attack. Possibly give them tetanus. "Hey boss, maybe I shouldn't have turned on the lights. There ain't no one living in this neighborhood but the rats. They're gonna notice the light."

"Who's gonna notice? The cops? No cop cares enough about this city to risk getting his ass blown off for a single gun shot and lights popping on in a junked warehouse. We're more likely to get arrested by bums and whores looking for rewards. But still, as entertaining as that might be, I need to take a piss, so let's go."

With no clean up involved, the boss and his two wiseguys headed toward the front port of the old parts factory where their car waited. They had nearly made it when the doorway was suddenly filled by a brilliant yellow light. The confusion dissipated a moment later in response to the words shouted over a bullhorn.

"DETROIT POLICE DEPARTMENT! DROP THE BAGS AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR! YOU ARE UNDER ARREST!"

The bags fell toward the floor and were immediately replaced by guns. The first reports of the fire fight seemed massive in the large space but it was nothing compared to the sound when the police waiting outside opened fire.

Pauly grabbed Biondo's shoulder and threw the old man to the floor. He covered his head with a cry as bullets pushed their way through the walls and zipped over head, tinging off fenders and causes wooden boxes to splitter. A hundred rounds had gone off in a matter of seconds and it only took the sight of Pauly being spun around by a bullet to the shoulder to get the old crime boss moving. He scrambled to his feet but kept low, veering to the line of gigantic metal shelves to his left. He scrambled down the line, moved an aisle over and kept going, the click of his fancy shoes nonexistent beneath the gunshots. When he reached an area of the most cover, he turned and ran straight toward the back of warehouse, avoiding the main exits for a service entrance near the old office.

Biondo only risked one backward glance as he pulled his revolver from its holster at his hip and slammed through the unassuming backdoor. He stumbled into the night and barely dropped to the ground in time to save his eyeball from being popped out by the barrel of a police issued semi-automatic aimed calmly at his head.

The cop was a bit short but armed to the teeth and armored at every angle, the letters SWAT written across his chest and dark visored helmet. Biondo's gun went skittering away under a dumpster but he didn't notice. He was still busy staring up at the single officer who had managed to make him piss his pants. The SWAT officer stood very still, like a statue, holding his gun aimed at where Biondo's head HAD been before the man had dropped to the ground. After a few rapid beats of Biondo's heart, the officer sighed.

"Fine. If you insist."

The gun smoothly dropped to point at where Biondo's head CURRENTLY rested. Still, the gun no longer held Biondo's complete attention. He was fairly busy thinking about the officer's voice. Calm and even, it was low and raspy, like someone who would probably be a lot better off if they laid off the cancer sticks. And the voice also just happened to belong to a woman.

The officer cocked her head in an almost curious fashion. "This means you're under arrest, by the way."

Biondo had to remember not to swallow his tongue in surprise. "You–you can't just point guns at law-abiding citizens."

"You are correct, sir. When I see one, I'll be sure to lower my weapon." There was calm amusement in her voice.

"My lawyers are going to have a field day with your ass!" Biondo cried, spraying a bit of spittle onto the front of his suit. The lawyers! Always fall back on the lawyers!

"Sir," the officer's arm didn't wavier in the least as she kept her gun trained on her detainee, "your mob lawyers are all back in Italy. When will you guy realize that the mafia gave up on Detroit about two decades ago? I mean, you don't even bother with the accent anymore, do you?"

Before Biondo could respond, a crackle came over the radio attached to the armor on her right shoulder. He couldn't hear a word of it over the pounding of blood in his ears.

"Ten-four, I hear you, Cal. Good job. I found myself an old guy. How about you boys come on out back. You know, whenever you're free." She let her radio go and turned her helmet back to Biondo. "You catch any of that? Looks like you had money AND cocaine in those bags. Man, that is not looking good for you. And then there's the dead body of course."

"I want to talk to my lawyers."

"They're on their way, sir. I think it's an nine hour flight from Italy to Detroit. Their plane should come into Metro sometime tomorrow morning."

The backdoor opened again and four officers in full SWAT gear walked out to where the catch of the night sat on his knees.

"No, no. Take more time, fellas. I insist. It's not like my damn arm is falling off here or anything," the female officer sighed and reholstered her gun as one of her fellow officers patted Biondo down and hand cuffed him.

"Hey, we knew you had him covered, Em," one cop pulled the old man to his feet.

Biondo was red in the face now. "I want the badges and names of every man on your SWAT team! You WILL hear from me!"

"Fair enough," his arresting officer unhooked her helmet and pulled it off. Her skin was dark and her eyes matched her black hair, pulled back into a tight bun. Her face was attractive but too rough around the edges to be considered beautiful. She was chewing gum. "I'm Second Officer Mendoza. These are Second Officers Callahan, Bateman, Fulton and Brinker. There are others, but we're the ones who enjoy our job the most." She smiled with the piece of gum wedged between her teeth.

"And since when did they start letting bitches onto SWAT?" Biondo growled, his rage finally beginning to dissipate with his adrenaline.

"Oh shut up. Ten bucks says my dick is bigger'n yours anyway," Mendoza snapped her gum and gave him a big grin.

Biondo began to spit curses and threats to the team and was collected by officers in regular uniform and taken back through the warehouse to be driven to the station. Mendoza mentioned the runaway six-shooter beneath the dumpster. Guns were holstered as the five arresting officers relax. It had been a good bust. Biondo's men were dead, but they had gotten what they had come for. Biondo and two canvass bags full of sweet, sweet incriminating evidence. Not too bad a bust for an operation that had been on the boards for two years. The rest of the SWAT team removed their helmets and Mendoza stuck her gum to the side of the dumpster and immediately pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Fulton quickly followed suit. Her first breath was let out in a long smokey sigh of happiness. "Better'n sex."

"You always say that," Bateman, a large black man the size of a linebacker, leaned back against the wall.

"And it's the truth every time," Mendoza smiled.

Brinker flicked ash to the ground. "Yeah, your husband must love that." Brinker was black and had a nose that had been broken at least ten times but he also owned the friendliest smile on the force.

Fulton, a stocky white man in his early thirties, plucked the cigarette from Mendoza's fingers and took a puff before handing it back. "Hey, Marty was in the military. He knows how good it is to shoot at shit and scare your enemy pantless."

Mendoza shook her head, "Meh, he was a military lawyer. Not MPs or grunts like the rest of us. Just don't tell him I said it or he might try out some domestic abuse."

There was along moment of silence before the entire team busted into laughter. Brinker finished his cigarette and walked back through the warehouse with the others, leaving Mendoza with Callahan who offered to stay until she finished her cigarette. When the rest of the guys were safely away, he frowned at his partner. "You don't really think that about sex, do you?"

Mendoza smiled, "No, but men seem to think the best thing a woman can have is man. It's my obligation to beat their masculinity down from time to time."

"Damn, you are one mean bitch. Semper fi."

"Hu-rrah. . ."

- - - - -

. . .The tile of her bathroom floor was always so cold. She curled her toes in a bit as she stood still in front of the sink. She wore only a tank top and white boxers. A tattoo of the letters SEMPER FIDELIS was written across her hips in an old English script. The small hairs on her arms and the back of her neck were standing on edge. She could blame it on the chilly floor but she would put money that it was more likely a reaction to what she held in her left hand.

Her right hand held something familiar and comforting. A small red box with the letters PALL MALL in a much plainer script then the tattoo on her lower back. The pack was mostly full and would last her probably until the end of the day if she was sparing with them. Martin had given up on telling her to quit long ago. Her left hand though . . .

It seemed like such a harmless thing. It was long, white, and had an indicator which had just done its job by indicating something. It indicated that she would have a lot more time to spend trying to clean her messy house. It indicated that she had to quit her job. It indicated she had to quit smoking.

She looked back and forth from the pink indicated mark to the red pack of cigarettes. New and scary. Familiar and safe. New and scary. Familiar and safe. New and very scary. She looked up into the mirror and almost laughed at the shock that was painted all over her reflected face. She had gone a shade paler and she couldn't seem to close her mouth. Her eyes were really big too.

_What are you going to do with those muscles now, chica? Push a vacuum cleaner? Build a play scape? Drive a fucking minivan?_

_Carry a child. That's what. You're going to carry your child in your arms._

Her right hand curled slowly closed, crushing the red box and its precious but deadly contents. It made a sad sound when it fell from her hand into the trash can.

When she heard her name called, she slowly set the pregnancy test down on the sink and called out to her husband. She had some news for him . . .

- - - - -

. . . Indescribable. Her coffee was simply indescribable. She couldn't think up any suitable adjectives as she grimaced and put her mug down. She grabbed five packets of sugar, hoping to rectify her grievous mistake but didn't have much hope. Man, it was coating her tongue like . . . like . . . bad coffee. She looked across the kitchen table to where her husband took a gulp from his own mug and set it down as though nothing was wrong in the world of taste and ruffled a page of the Detroit Free Press. She stared at him, waiting for his mouth to screw into a grimace. Or for his eyes to start watering. Or perhaps for his face to turn green. He bit into a piece of toast, none the worse for wear.

". . . Dammit, Martin, at least make a gagging sound. Assure me you have taste buds in there somewhere."

"What's that?" he swallowed his toast and looked up at his wife, reaching for his mug again.

"How can you drink that shit?"

He looked down at his mug and back up at her, his green eyes twinkling a bit in the morning light coming through the window. "My beautiful wife made it. How can I think it's anything be delicious?"

"Um, because it tastes like diesel fuel. That's it! Diesel fuel!"

"What's it?"

"I was looking for an adjective to describe this swill. Diesel fuel is pretty close."

"It tastes fine, Em," Martin smiled. "The coffee at the office is worse."

The sugar didn't help it a damn. She pushed her mug away with a sigh. "Yeah. That's what this is. This is police office coffee. Alright, I give up. You can make the morning coffee again."

He pushed his bottom lip out, "Oh, but you wanted to make the coffee. You begged and begged and I said okay after you got me in that headlock. The coffee machine is your domain now."

She leaned back in her chair so she could put her foot up on the windowsill. "Don't be a dick. I'm giving you back your coffee making rights. Don't make me beg. You know I get angry when I have to beg."

"Then I gratefully accept them back. So you don't mind if I do this," He stood and grabbed both their mugs and dumped them into the sink. He followed that up with the entire pot of coffee and the filter went into the trash for good measure. He held his blue tie to his chest as he sat back down in his chair. "So how upset was the precinct when you handed in your resignation?"

"Upset? They threw a fucking party. They were making dibs for my desk as I was laying my badge down on the Lieutenant's desk."

"Oh, they all loved you," Martin looked at his watch and stood right back up again, patting his pocket for his keys and pulling on his suit coat. "I'm almost positive you were having an affair with at least three of them."

"Scandalous. Are you going to sue me?"

"Don't think I won't," he smiled as he pulled on his over coat and grabbed his briefcase.

"Get the hell out of my house, you untrustworthy shyster."

Martin leaned over his wife and kissed her. "I love you, Emirene."

"Love you."

Within ten minutes, she was bored out of her mind. She turned on the TV just to turn it off again. She folded the Lazy-Boy out just to fold it back again. She was eyeing her weights when the telephone rang. She nearly catapulted over the couch to get it.

"Mendoza . . . Callahan! Oh thank God. I've been retired for three days and I'm already - - what?" She listened for a moment before reaching out for a chair and falling numbly into it. Her voice was softer when she spoke again. "When? . . . Wait, was Sharon and the kids . . . oh my God. Oh my God. Well . . . no, I'm coming down to the precinct. . . . No, Sean, I'm coming down now, I'll be there in . . . but . . . Sean . . ." Her voice began to waver as her eyes stung with tears. " . . . Okay. Okay alright . . . when is the funeral? . . ."

- - - - -

. . . It was the two small coffins that made joy seem forever lost. The large coffin with the American flag draped over it was devastating. The matching coffin of the soldier's wife was heartrending. But the two small coffins were completely unbearable. She found she simply could not look at them and she turned away as people streamed by in silence to touch the family of coffins, one by one. She held onto her husband's arm and looked over his shoulder across the green lawn of Elmwood Cemetery. He squeezed her hand and respectfully said nothing.

The day was bright and beautiful, a splendid irony lost on everyone. The ranks of police stayed until the last of the line finished their goodbyes. Her husband softly warned her that her Lieutenant was approaching so she blinked back the tears swimming in her eyes and took a few deep breaths. She turned just as the Lieutenant came to a stop behind her. Her hand moved to salute him, which would have been protocol if she were in her dress blues, but she felt the flowing skirt drift against her shins and her hand stopped its upward momentum. It hung unsure in the air for a moment before she moved it forward, offering her hand. The Lieutenant took it and used it to pull her into his arms. He was a tall, older black man, extremely venerable with a quiet and respect-inspiring demeanor and she nearly disappeared into his arms. She stood motionless in his arms for a moment before resting her hands on his broad back.

"I wish you were still with us, Emirene. We could all really use you right now," the Lieutenant said softly just above the gentle rush of wind through the trees.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and her arms tightened a bit around him. She didn't say anything so he let her go. He leaned down to kiss her cheek before shaking Martin's hand and walking away.

The uniforms left solemnly, leaving behind only the extended relatives of the deceased Brinker family, three of Bernard Brinker's partners, and an ex-partner and her husband. The family kept to themselves, crying over the flag they had been given at the end of the funeral ceremony.

She gave her husband's hand a squeeze before going and joining Callahan, Bateman and Fulton beside a wonderful old oak tree a few plots over. They were all in their dress blues. She should be matching them, but she was no longer a Detroit Police Officer. She walked over and stopped, standing with them in silence for a long moment. She still had her back turned to the graves. She put her hand down along her thigh to keep a sudden breeze from lifting her skirt too high.

" . . .Can you please tell me what you know about how it happened?" She whispered to her old partners. Her old friends.

Callahan cleared his throat, "I talked to Richards in Arson. He hasn't ruled out accidental . . . but it's not looking good."

"So you're saying that someone purposefully set fire to Brinker's home. Someone purposefully burned him and his entire family alive?" She looked out over the cemetery to the stone walls that enclosed it from the rest of the city.

"That's what it looks like," Fulton said softly.

They all stood silent, three blue uniforms and a grey dress. Nearly ten minutes passed before she found the courage to speak again. "You're going to find the bastards who did this, right?"

"We're going to find them," Bateman said in a low, dangerous voice.

"No matter what?" She whispered.

"No matter what," Callahan nodded . . .


	2. Chapter 2

RIGHT NOW

It was pretending to be human. It was moving, writhing, wriggling. It was trying to force dirt from its lungs as it clawed its way upward. Its skin was torn by small rocks and sticks buried between it and the sky, but the skin was healing far too quickly for it to claim humanity. It didn't realize this, however, and therefore believed itself to be human.

The grassy earth by the old oak tree bent into a mound as it pushed its way up from the underneath. Two hands broke the surface, fingers bound together by a chain of beads. The trapped hands jerked about wildly, widening the opening they had found until the thing's head broke the surface. Darkness met it once more, but a different kind of darkness. The darkness of night, not earth. For eyes so accustom to being closed, the sprinkle of stars through the boughs of the tree above was enough for the thing to cringe back, burying its face back into the upturned dirt. It moaned in fright until its old brain told it that the lights were only stars and they were certainly too far away to cause any harm.

It took an hour for the thing to pull itself free of its grave and it laid on its face for another ten minutes, gasping in dirt and grass and air as it tried to remember what it was like to breathe. Its heart beat like a hammer banging around an empty tin barrel. It felt like the only thing it had inside, banging around and looking for a place to be.

When the strength to move was finally achieved, it rolled itself onto its back and lifted its arms, staring at the unbreaking chain of metal that bounds all ten of its fingers together. It didn't see a heavy duty chain. It saw a rosary. Dirt was clogged in the fine metal loops of its delicate chain and the glass beads of prayer were scratched by the voyage to freedom. The thing yanked and pulled, trying desperately to break the rosary but the string of beads simply wouldn't give. The creature recognized its panic after a time of useless struggling and stopped its violent yanking. It sat and stared at the way the rosary was twisted around its finger, locking the digits together. And slowly, with inhuman patience, it began to move the chain around, slowly and painfully undoing one delicate knot at a time.

When the holy relic finally fell from its fingers, the creature immediately grabbed the unbreakable chain and held it close to its dirty chest. It now had time to look around, squinting against the glare of streetlights off granite, against the shine of the stars above. Strange shapes, all over. Too many. It became confused. It decided to just start moving.

It climbed to its feet slowly, feeling pieces of its dirty clothing fall away as it went. No matter. It took a tentative step before it notice something out of the corner of its eye. The curious object was black. More black then anything. Darker then the night. Darker then being in the ground. It seemed like a void in the fabric of the world and it drew the eye. The creature went to a knee and only after a long moment of staring did it finally begin to see details. Its brain told it that this thing, blacker than black itself, was a bird. A dead bird.

The thing felt its third emotion of the evening. First fear, then panic. Now pity. Poor dead black bird. It reached out and touched a wing, spread out over a piece of granite embedded in the ground. The creature was surprised when the dead bird gave out a faint and sudden squawk. It flinched away from the bird in astonishment. It hoovered there, half way between bending down further and getting up to walk away. Then the bird squawked again and the indecision disappeared. It leaned down and, with its free hand, scooped the not-so-dead bird up into the crook of its arm. It didn't look at the stone the bird had been lying on. It didn't read the name. It turned, stood and began to walk.

The cemetery was closed for the night against vandals, but the lock must have been extremely old and rusty because it came away with a simple tug. The wrought-iron gate creaked open as it moved and sent shivers of pain through the creature's head but it continued to pull it open. It certainly couldn't stay here. This is where it started, but it wasn't where it was suppose to stay. The black bird squawked in agreement at the offensive sound and curled up under the creature's arm and fell quiet again.

This city was a fairly quiet one at night. A good number of the houses were abandoned or burnt out and the rest of the community knew better then to go out at night. Still, dark as it was, the street lights were on and the creature stuck to the shadows, more to avoid the brilliance against its sensitive eyes than to remain unseen. But as it walked, its legs grew stronger and its eyes grew more resistant to the light. It no longer had to huddle its face against buildings as it walked. A few cars drove by, but no one saw the dirty thing walking slowly inside the shadows of buildings.

As it walked from one neighborhood to the next, there were less burned out houses and empty lots and more flower beds and mowed lawns. They were nowhere near as perfect as the manicured and landscaped lawns of the suburbs, but it was a nice little cluster of houses and the creature found it vaguely familiar.

It found the familiarity comforting and it walked aimlessly, looking around but not at anything in particular. It would have walked past the house if the black bird, long silent now, had not cawed so loudly. The creature stubbed a bare toe in its attempt to stop and see what the big deal was. When its dark eyes fell on the house at the end of the walk it was standing in front of, its chest closed up with sudden emotion. Home.

Its eyes remained painfully dry as it shuffled quickly up the walk and stepped up onto the porch. It looked at the dark green door with total love and trust. It stood there staring happily for a few minutes, rocking slowly back and forth from leg to leg. It squeezed the bird under its arm and the rosary in its hand. It opened its mouth to call out a name but it was struck by a sudden coughing fit. It nearly dropped the bird as it doubled over. It watched in horror as chunks of dirt fell from its mouth onto the concrete porch. It managed to not fall by leaning against the door and coughing until the dirt and grass and rocks stopped falling from its throat.

When the door suddenly opened, the creature nearly fell into the foyer of its own house. The balance it suddenly found was unprecedented and it was able to stand up and back suddenly. A familiar click filled its ears but the voice that accompanied it was not recognized.

"I've got the police on speed dial. You get off my porch right–oh!"

The creature blinked at the small black woman standing just inside its home, handkerchief covering curlers in her hair and shotgun pointed outward. The woman's dark eyes widened in shock at the sight of the creature at her front door.

"Oh what happened to you, baby? What's your name? You look awful," The old woman quickly put the shot gun aside and reached out and grabbed the creature by the hand that was clutching the rosary. She looked up into the creature's face with true concern. "Are you alright, honey, can you hear me?"

The creature opened its mouth but it still hadn't remembered how to speak yet. The woman who was in the creature's house quickly pulled it inside and closed the door behind it. She hustled the creature into its own living room . . . but the living room was different! That couch . . . it use to be a black leather couch. Now it was gree fabric. And the hardwood floor was covered in a yellow carpet. The pictures on the wall . . . faces unknown. There was a piano in the corner. There hadn't been a piano before. The creature's face crumpled back into fear and confusion as it looked around.

"Alright, child, alright. Don't you cry. Betty's gonna help you, okay?"

Betty didn't even pause to put a towel or plastic bag of any sort down before leading the creature over to sit on her small couch. It sat and looked around at its house that had someone else's stuff in it. "Can you hear me, darling? Can you tell me your name? . . . No maybe not. That's a big bird you have there. Is it alive? Let me go get something . . ."

The creature just stared around until Betty came back with a shoe box filled with tissues. "Why don't you put that sick bird in here, darling. Give it a rest, okay?"

The bird squawked in weak protest as the creature leaned forward and set into the make shift bed but it settled in once it was there, just small enough to fit. It lay still, panting with its beak open. "What's that, a raven? Or a crow? It sure is big, though it's not looking too good. But you're not looking too good either. How about we get you washed up and put some food in your stomach? Does that sound good, child? Then we can call some people and find out where you came from, alright? I'm gonna go run a bath for you. Would you like some tea? I'll make you some tea."

The creature sat unblinking, listening to Betty moving around the kitchen to put the kettle on. It heard her shuffle into the bathroom and start the water running. Its eye twitched a bit when the kettle began to whistle but Betty turned off the stove before the pain became too great. She came back to the couch with a steaming cup of tea. The creature held the tea cup when it was handed over, but did not try to drink from it. Betty sat in an old green chair and watched it quietly. She was twisting a finger on her ring nervously, not sure what to do now.

"You don't want that tea?" There was a long moment of silence which had to be accepted as a response. Betty leaned forward and took the cup back and put it down on the coffee table. "Your bath should be about ready now. How about you try that? It's bound to make you feel better. Come on." She stood slowly and took the creature's hand and pulled it up from the couch. She lead it out of the living room and down a short hall to the bathroom. The creature stepped into its bathroom and looked at itself in the mirror.

Dirty. The mirror reflected a person so completely dirty that the colorless skin beneath it seemed almost grey. The eyes were wide and black and the hair hung long and dirty down past the shoulders. The face was attractive but too rough around the edges to be considered beautiful. The formless mass of cloth that hung around it seemed to be a dress. It was a bit surprised. It hadn't remembered being a woman.

Betty stepped over to the tub and turned off the faucet. She hurried around, taking down a towel and a robe, opening a new bar of soap. "Take your time, alright child? Just get yourself cleaned up right good and we'll have some more tea alright? You call me if you need me."

Betty closed the door behind her as she left and it, or perhaps it could be called she, stared at herself a moment longer before looking over at the tub. Betty must have put some salts in it because it had a nice smell and a slightly purple tint to it. She stepped over to it, lifted a foot and got in. She stood with hot water up to her mid calf, then slowly sat down into the water, tattered dress and all, rosary still clutched in her hand. The pretty water began to dissolve into brown but she didn't notice. She slowly curled forward until her face pushed below the surface of the water and she just sat there, eyes open, staring through the water to the bottom of the tub. Her tub. She had never been a big bath person, but she had taken a bath here a few times. Once or twice with Martin, if they were in that kind of mood. Martin!

Martin! Martin. Martin was her husband. It was the first name that came to her and it immediately filled her with tenderness and love . . .

_. . . She called out to Martin. She kept staring down at the sink and the indicator that told her she was pregnant. She heard him moving through the house so she called out to him again. "I'm in the bathroom. Come here."_

"_What's wrong? Is the toilet plugged up?" He opened the door and stepped in, moving past her to peer into the toilet. Looked alright. He looked at her reflection in the mirror and found her beautiful. She looked a little pale, but a slight flush highlighted her cheekbones wonderfully. He wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and kissed her neck. "Do you want me to compliment you? Because I will but only if you promise not to call me a over-romantic pussy. You're beautiful. Your hair is like the night, glistening with stars." He kissed her neck and moved a hand up to fondly squeeze her breast. "You're eyes are like pieces of eternity, glittering with endless light," His eyes moved down to the sink to where she was staring. "Your skin is like . . . like. . ." and then he finally shut up. He stared down over her head without a word, processing what he saw there._

"_Is that. . ."_

"_Yeah."_

"_Does that say that you're . . ."_

"_Yeah."_

_His eyes jumped up to meet hers in the reflection of the mirror. She was still pale but there was excitement in her eyes and her lips twitched a little as though fighting one killer of a smile. His face split into a grin. He stood back and grabbed her shoulders, spinning her around and catching her face in his hands. "We're going to have a baby?"_

_Her voice was shaking as her face finally gave in and she smiled. "Yeah." She put her arms around his shoulders and jump up, locking her legs around his waist. He crushed her in a hug and haphazardly spun in a circle in the small bathroom. She laughed and kissed him and held on tight._

_He kissed her back and kissed her and kissed her before finally letting her down. She backed up against the sink and pulled him with her, kissing him passionately, hands roaming. He broke free long enough for her to pull the t-shirt over his head and toss it to the floor. He stepped back and led her into the bathtub where he pulled the curtain closed because it was funny. She laughed as he dipped his mouth to her throat and drew a line of kisses down her tank top as he went to his knees. When he reached her belly, he stopped and stared. Her copper skin was smooth and taut over the well trained muscles of her stomach. There was a small birthmark just below and to the right of her belly button. He gently laid a hand against her smooth abdomen._

_She watched him, her chin to her chest, and ran her fingers gently through his dirty blond hair. His hair was always so impeccable, parted the same way, combed the same way. The hair of a lawyer. She mussed it up with a smile as he leaned forward and kissed her belly. He put his cheek against her skin and rested his head there with a smile. She put her forearms around his head and held him. They stood like that for a long time, closed off in a shower of gleaming white porcelain and tile._

"_You know this officially makes you a motherfucker, right?" She said with a smile in her voice._

"_How is that?" he questioned, eyes closed and content as he hugged her hips._

"_Well, I'm going to officially be a mother, and you like to fuck me, so . . ."_

"_Then I can't wait to get my Motherfucker's Day tie every year and grill hot dogs out in the backyard in celebration."_

"_Hey, ten bucks says this kid's first word isn't going to be a very nice one . . ."_

. . . The ache in her chest was unbelievable. The memory had been so real, so right now. It had been more vivid then any memory or dream could be. She stared down at the bottom of the bathtub, thinking about Martin. About the way he smelled. About how he drummed his fingers against a door instead of knocking on it like a normal person. About how piercing his green eyes were and how bright they had been that day in the bathroom. Her arms moved slowly through the water until she was hugging herself. She rocked slowly, making the water slosh gently against the front of the tub and then the back.

She jumped a bit when a knock came to the door. She lifted her face out of the water and tilted her head to listen. "Are you alright in there? It's been a half hour. You need anything else?"

A half hour? She'd been sitting with her face under water for a half hour? She looked back down into the tub and could no longer ignore how dirty the water was. How dirty she was. She splashed around a bit so Betty would know she was still 'alive' in here and looked around. She saw a big bottle of generic shampoo and she picked it up. She leaned over and put her head in the water again, this time using her empty hand to pull all her hair under, to get it all wet. She sat up with the dark veil of wet hair hanging in her face and squeezed out a huge amount of shampoo into the palm of her hand. She slapped it on her head and began working it in, keeping the other hand ever closed and against her chest. When the suds were thick enough, she submerged her head again and shook her head, rubbing her scalp until all the soap was gone. She sat up and pushed her hair back out of the way and reached for the soap.


	3. Chapter 3

It took another half hour of scrubbing the soap over her skin before she was satisfied. All the grime and dirt had been transferred to the water and she could no longer sit in it without feeling sick. She wiggled out of her old dress and left it floating in the bath as she stood. She turned the shower on for a second to let the dirty water run off and then she grabbed for the robe, pulling it on and tying off the waist. She picked up the towel and put it to her nose. It didn't smell like her towels because her towels smelled like Martin and these didn't smell like Martin.

Martin. Where was Martin? Why wasn't he here? Why wasn't he in their home? She dropped the towel and hurried to the bathroom door. She pulled it out and called out "Martin!" Betty hurried down the hall, eyes wide.

"Did you say something dear? What did you say?"

"Martin," she gasped. "Where . . . where is . . . Martin Pearson?"

Betty blinked. "Martin Pearson? Why, he's the man that sold me this house."

"Where is he?" She held onto the door as though it were a shield. Her face, now sans dirt, was so pale it might as well have had no pigment.

"Well, I think I heard he moved to Indian Village. I see him on the news sometimes. I hope he wins his election to City Council. He seems like a good man."

She stared at the woman and for a while didn't say anything and Betty was looking worried. Then she cleared her throat. "When did he sell this house to you? When?"

"When? Oh, about five years ago. He didn't ask much for it or I couldn't have afforded it. I guess he just wanted to get out. He moved a few months after his poor wife died. He probably couldn't stand being in the same house without her . . . are you alright, child?"

Betty only had a moment to see the woman shaking bodily before the door was closed in her face. She frowned and sighed, moving back down the hall. She should probably call the police and ask about missing people.

The woman in the robe sat down heavily on the toilet. She stared off at nothing, her mind refusing to comprehend. Eventually she stood and opened the mirror for something to do. Something to distract her mind. She saw many orange medication bottles, a few cotton swabs, and a bag of makeup. She took the make up down and closed the mirror, sitting back on the toilet to go through it. _Five years? _Most of it was stuff that wouldn't work. The foundation was not her color and the color of the eye shadows and lip sticks weren't her favorites. There was eyeliner though, and she had always been a fan of eyeliner. _Dead wife? _She put the rest of the bag aside and stood, leaning over the sink as she began to carefully trace her eyes with the eye liner. She blinked and stood back to see how it looked. Decent. She leaned in and drew the line thicker and thicker.

It was more than she usually wore, but putting it on felt normal, like a soothing ritual that could help her forget for a few moments. _Five years ago?_ She finally put the pencil in the pocket of the robe with a content sigh and stared at her eyes. She looked down the nose to the lips below. Lips that Martin loved to kiss. She looked down her neck . . . and her eyes froze. She stared at her chest where the V of the robe fell away from her. She stood back and her hands slowly untied the robe. She opened it and stared at her reflection.

The incisions had been started just below her collar bones and angled down the inside of her breasts until they met between them. From there, the thick cut continued down the middle of her torso to stop just above her naval. The incision was free of blood or infection, but it hadn't healed either. It was held together by stitches of thick black plastic and it looked like it had been a fast sewing job. Like someone in a hurry finish and move on.

And all around this massive Y incision were thin deep cuts, each one about an inch long. None of them were healed over either, just open slashes in her pale skin–

–_The knock that came to the door didn't set off her cop instincts. It shouldn't have. People knock on front doors all the time. She had only been home from the supermarket twenty minutes and hadn't even put half of her groceries away when she got distracted by the sound. For a moment she thought she would ignore it and the person would go away, but the knocking became rather insistent. She sighed in annoyance, put two more cans of tomato soup in the cupboard, and turned out of the kitchen to the front door._

_It could have been either her cop training or her military training that made her lift both her forearms up in a double block a second before the fence post had the chance to crack her head open. As it was, it cracked itself in half against her raised forearms and sent her reeling back into her house, one elbow smashing a picture as her back slammed into the hallway wall. The pain in her arms made her want to drop them and curse, but the two men rushing into her home usurped her desire to wonder how injured she really was._

_She saw a flash of gunmetal and rolled out of the way, along the wall, before the picture she had broken exploded. The silencer was loud in its own right, but kept its noise captured in the house. She rolled free of the wall and took a step back into the kitchen with the thought of finding a knife. She didn't get time to so much as glance for a weapon before a hand grabbed her by her hair and yanked her backward._

_They must have been waiting since before she'd come home from the supermarket. Two men across the street, one man inside her home. Surely she would have heard them break the lock on the back door had she been home at the time. She would have gotten up to her bedroom and unlocked her gun by the time they could find her and then they would have been really sorry that they had broken her lock in the first place._

_Her hands instinctively went to her hair, to try to break the hold of the thick fingers tangled there, but she was off balance from her backward momentum and could do nothing but take a brutal knee to the solar plexus that forced the air from her body before she could even cry out. She gasped as her knees buckled and her vision darkened. She didn't hear the men speaking to each other or communicating in anyway. Surely they had planned enough ahead that they wouldn't need to speak._

_When she felt the end of a hot silencer pushed under her jaw, she stood up as straight as possible, trying to get away from it. Her head was locked between the hand in her hair and the gun beneath her chin. Her fuzzy vision was of her ceiling. Some of the paint was peeling and a piece was gone. She hadn't noticed that before._

"_Emirene Mendoza?"_

_It was hard to swallow with the gun pushed so tightly against her throat. "That bitch don' live here no more." She hadn't seen one face yet. It had all happened so fast and here she was, trapped staring at her own damn ceiling._

"_Sure," was the response._

_She felt the gun leave her throat, but a moment later she was lifted bodily and thrown through the air. She flew through the open door that lead from the kitchen down to the cellar. She was thrown so forcefully that her body didn't even connect with the wooden stairs until she was half way to the basement floor._

_She couldn't even be sure what parts of her hit the angles of the stairs as she crashed down them but she heard something snap. It could have been her leg, or it could have just been one of the steps. She was in too much sudden pain to tell. She very suddenly found herself laying face up on her cellar floor, looking at yet another ceiling. This one was a maze of uncovered pipes and ducts. She stared up at them in shock, her brain just beginning to comprehend what had happened._

_When she heard the creaking of footsteps coming down the steps, she painfully turned her back to the steps, rolling onto her side and curling up, using every inch of her to surround her mid-section. No . . . no . . . did I hit my stomach on the way down? Did I? Did I!_

_She felt the men move around her even as she kept her body curled up and eyes tightly shut. They might have been talking now but she couldn't hear much through her shock. She moved from her position only when a shoe touched her shoulder and pushed her onto her back._

_The men standing above her wore dark coats, ties and gloves. Their shirts were different colors, details not really important enough to remember. Their shoes were expensive and polished brightly. Not junkies breaking in, looking for money to buy drugs. Not robbers, looking for a DVD player or even her locked away gun. She knew hitmen when she saw them._

"_Wow, that fucked her up good, didn't it?" The only bald guy in the room said, frowning down at her curiously. He was a bit heavy set but had stylish black frame glasses. He flexed his hand and brushed it down his leg and she saw dark strands of hair drift to the ground beside her._

"_Yeah. Geez. I wish the door had been closed. I bet you could have sent her through it without a problem," the second man had curly blond hair cut short. She noticed he was wearing saddle shoes. How can you not notice when they were parked right beside your head?_

"_Can you hear me? You still got some brains left in your head after that tumble?" The third man had a perfectly trimmed goatee and used a hair treatment that smelled strangely of pine. It might be interesting to note that HIS shirt was worth mentioning, seeing as it was pink. Which she thought was ridiculous. It might almost be noteworthy that he was the one with the silenced gun in his hand._

_She couldn't move much, but she found there was some blood in her mouth, so she used it to spit in his general direction. _

"_Fair enough," Goatee pushed back his coat and holstered his gun in a docker's clutch. "You're not screaming for help. What's your reasoning behind this? Surely you don't think you can take us all on by yourself after the accident you just had."_

_She blinked to clear the stars of pain from her eyes. "I . . .never was one for screaming. This was not a smart idea on your part, by the way. I'm a cop."_

"_Really? That's odd because I was told you WERE a cop. You quit, remember? Not that I would shy away from killing a cop," he took the moment to smile at his friends who chuckled amongst themselves._

"_So who the fuck sent you?" She tried to move but nothing wanted to respond to her mental commands. She was feeling tired. Probably a closed head injury._

"_Who do you think sent me?" He asked calmly with a smile._

"_That bitch, Biondo. I only asked because I was hoping it would be someone more impressive and scary."_

_The backhand was so fast that she didn't understand the sudden pain in her face or why she had turned her head so quickly to the side for a moment. She felt blood flooding into her mouth and had to spit it out or choke on it. A tooth came out with it and made a small tap on the concrete floor. Goatee was crouched just above her. She hadn't even seen him begin to move. God, he was fast._

"_That's not nice. Don't say that again. You wouldn't want me to have to defend Mr. Biondo's honor by having my associate here toss your husband down the stairs next to you."_

_The blood soaked words in her mouth immediately vanished. She just glared up at him and wished for his immediate death._

"_Hey, Nico, can I do her first?" Saddles Shoes asked, grabbing his crotch,"I can make her scream for you."_

"_Put your dick back in your pants, Vic. This is a hit and we don't want her friends at the precinct thinking it could possibly be anything else. This has to be a clear cut lesson." Goatee pulled out a long, thin knife, perhaps to prove his resolve._

"_Come on, Nico," Saddle Shoes moved around the victim and nudged the tip of his shoe into her crotch. She couldn't find the energy to shift away. "I'll be gentle then. Maybe they won't even notice I did it--"_

_Goatee was on his feet again like a bolt of lightning. He pushed Saddle Shoes' foot away with his own and followed it up with a solid smack to the back of the guy's head. "Shut the fuck up. These are orders direct from Biondo. Do I have to cut off your dick to make sure you're going to behave yourself?"_

_Saddle Shoes shook his head violently and backed away a few steps, keeping his mouth shut. Goatee looked back down at her and a fake smile splashed across his face. "Biondo had real strict instructions about you. He said you were the one who got him arrested."_

"_Fuck yeah I did. He even pissed himself when he saw me," she growled through the ache in her mouth._

"_You know, there's something about a strong woman that confuses my sensibilities." Goatee flipped the knife in his hand until he grasped the blade, then held it over his shoulder for Saddle Shoes to take. When his hands were free, he pulled out a cigarette and lit it with a zippo. "On the one hand, I find it extremely hot to see a woman step up to a man and actually take him down. On the other, It makes me want to beat the shit out of her and put her in her place. You know what I mean?"_

"_Look, you don't have to kill me." She gritted her teeth against the pain and rage of having to take what the man had just said and still beg. "You can tell him you did and he won't know. He's gonna be in prison until he dies," she tried to speak calmly, even as she saw Saddle Shoes moving closer to her, swinging the knife from hand to hand._

"_I suppose he will be. He is getting rather old. But if I decided to go back on a business deal made with a very good friend, what would you give me?"_

"_I . . ." she couldn't think of a damn thing she could offer that would be worth enough to keep him from doing his job._

"_Yeah, I thought so. Nothing personal, you understand." Goatee snapped his fingers and Saddle Shoes flipped the knife handle against his palm, tightened his hand and went to a knee, bringing the knife down with him. She felt it slide into her chest all the way to the hilt. She screamed. The knife came back out with a wet sucking sound and came down again with a thud into her right breast–_

–She threw her arms around her body, hugging her destroyed chest tightly as the memory smashed through her brain. She stumbled away from the mirror and nearly tripped backwards over the toilet. She held herself tight and gasped. The pain of her memory was just as fresh as if had been happening right now. She stared at her image in the mirror and didn't recognize the face. It was a twisted mask of horror and pain. She gasped and moaned, clutching at the robe.

She remembered the sound the knife made each time it hit her. Sometimes it was a solid thunk into muscle, but sometimes there was a grinding sound that she knew had to have been the knife scraping against bone. She remembered feeling her breath suddenly halved as the knife punctured and deflated a lung.

"God . . . you bastards, you . . ."

As her robe fell completely open, she saw what lay below her waist. A long crescent incision beneath her naval, sewn up like the one on her chest, huge and curving like a demented grin–

–_There was so much blood. So much she couldn't even see her clothes anymore. She didn't know how many times she had been stabbed. Saddles Shoes was good. He knew where to stab to inflict damage and pain and yet be sure she didn't die too quickly._

_She had seen plenty of stab wounds in her day. She had seen a woman survive an assault by her husband with forty stab wounds in her chest. She looked like hamburger, but she had lived. The human body was a curiously resilient thing. But still, there was so much blood . . ._

_Lie still. Let them think you're dead. They'll leave and you'll wait for Martin to come home. Maybe he'll come home early today. Maybe he'll find you in time. Maybe he can save your . . ._

_Goatee placed his foot unceremoniously on her chest and applied pressure. No acting school in the world would have kept her eyes from flaring open, her single lung of air from being forced out in a scream. With it came blood that spattered across her face and ran down her neck into her hair._

_Goatee kindly waited for her small supply of air to run out before he took his foot back. "So you are aware, this was all specifically requested by our client. He really doesn't like you and didn't want this to go too swiftly. You understand of course."_

_She opened her mouth again. Her voice was nearly nonexistent beneath the constant supply of blood seeping into her mouth. ". . .P. . . lease. . ." she gurgled._

"_I'm sorry, what was that?" Goatee crouched above her and lowered his ear over her mouth._

"_Pl . . .e. . . I'm . . . my . . ."_

"_Oh, is this the part where you ask me to spare your life for the sake of your unborn child?"_

_Her voice gave up on her. She stared up at his face, only inches from hers, in horror. How? How had he known she was pregnant? She had only told one or two people aside from her husband. The precinct didn't know why she had retired. No one did. How?_

"_Mrs. Mendoza, I don't think you quite understand who I am," Goatee raised his hand and received the bloody knife. "I am a hit man. I kill mobsters. I kill wise guys. I kill civilians." He shifted and began to run the tip of the knife down the mutilated remains of her chest, " I kill cops," the blade trailed down her stomach, past her naval, and stopped, "and I clearly kill women. Why would I stop short at a fetus that's no larger then a peanut? What is it to me?" The tip of the knife poked into the curve of her belly that had only recently begun to round out with the first signs of pregnancy._

_What air she could force through her vocal cords was small and strained. Her words came out softer then a whisper, ". . . no. . . God . . . please . . ."_

_The stabs, five in total, came so suddenly that she almost didn't feel them. He left the knife in her belly after the final one, protruding a little below and to the right of her belly button, obliterating her birthmark._

_Her voice was gone. She would speak no more. She would no longer hope that they would leave her alive and her husband would find her in time. She no longer cared if she died. She had failed to protect the most important thing that had ever come into her life. Fuck living. Fuck these men. And fuck her._

_She heard them say that she had snapped. That there was no fun left to be had. She vaguely saw Goatee pull his gun from his docker's clutch and cock it. She saw his finger tightening on the trigger, but she never heard the gunshot._

–Emirene Mendoza, the dead wife of Martin Pearson, Esq., fell to her knees hard enough to crack three of the small bathroom floor tiles. Her fingers curled up, the nails pushing through the thick fabric of the robe to draw blood from her arms. The sound that emanated from her throat and filled the entire house was excruciating, agonizing and complete inhuman.

Her first tears in this non-life washed down her face and seemed to burn like acid. They dripped off her chin and onto the tiles below and showed no signs of stopping. She shrieked over and over again, taking full breathes each time and filling her lung to capacity. She only had one working lung after all, assuming it was even in her chest.

She screamed until her throat was raw and then she coughed until a small spatter of blood marked the white tiles. Her body was spent, weak and shaking. She used the sink to pull herself to her feet. When she saw her reflection, she moaned in fear. The eyeliner. The eyeliner she had put on so carefully to make herself feel like a person again. It had been devastated by the tears and ran in long dark lines down from her eyes to her chin. Black tears stained into her pale skin. The sight of it terrified her.

She spun around in a flurry of wet hair and bathrobe and yanked the bathroom door open. She didn't see Betty huddling in her kitchen, scared to death, as she ran down the hall. She plucked the crow out of its shoe-box bed and fled the house, disappearing into the night.


	4. Chapter 4

Picking up his dry cleaning in the morning on his way to work was the most interesting part of Martin Pearson's day so far. The law office was quiet when he walked in and it was still quiet three hours later. He didn't feel up to driving out to his campaign office on Woodward so he would just stay here. He closed himself in his small office and barricaded himself behind his desk.

The sheer amount of files was unfair. The workload for a public defender was always insane. The work load for a public defender that did work pro bono was astronomical. He glanced to his left to see that the bowl he had put under the leak in the ceiling was nearly full. He'd have to dump it out in a bit but he didn't feel like doing it at the moment.

He was tired. Just plain tired. This was one of the few days he ever had when he didn't have two or more court appearances and he decided that he had a right to take advantage of it and just be tired for once.

Deciding to treat himself, he pulled out a glass, a small bottle of whiskey he had hidden away, and a pack of Pall Malls. He lit his cigarette first and then poured himself a drink. He sat back in his chair and watched the smoke drift toward the ceiling. _Please, please don't let the phone ring. At least not for the next two minutes. Give me this._

His eyes drifted to one of the many filing cabinets that lined his office. This one in particular was tan, stood five shelves high, and had a lock made specially for the cabinet at the bottom. He looked down at the cabinet and licked his lips. He loosened his tie and looked away. He took a sip of whiskey and looked back.

When he had first had that lock installed, he never used it. That drawer was always open. He was always pouring through the contents, beatings his brow as he dragged every last word for the smallest bit of evidence. Over the last five years, he had been opening that drawer less and less. He had gotten to the point where he could go months without even looking at it. But he couldn't blame himself for thinking of it now, considering what yesterday's date was.

He had gone to the cemetery early yesterday morning. He had waited an hour for it to open. Still, once he had been allowed in, he had only stayed for five minutes. He regretted it now. His visits grew shorter with every passing year. He wondered if he'd even have the heart to show up at all next year.

He threw back the rest of the whiskey and grimaced as it burned. Raising his cigarette, he gave a toast, "To you, Em. I told you that you'd be the only one who could ever drive me to smoke."

When a knock came to the door, he sighed and stubbed out his cigarette, slipping the ash tray quickly under his desk. "Come in."

His secretary walked in with a few files. Her small nose curled up at the smell of smoke but she said nothing about it. "I brought you the updates on the Bridgestone case. And Judge Falcone's office called to postpone Mr. Vaitel's case, originally scheduled for tomorrow. Is early next week all right?"

"Yeah, that's fine. Monday or Tuesday. Whichever is better for Tony," he took the files from her.

"Mort wants you to meet him for lunch at The Roostertail. He seems excited about the Hansen case."

Martin gave her a tired smile. "Mort always has to be excited about something. If it was the end of the world, he'd be excited that he wouldn't have to come into work tomorrow."

The secretary smiled. "I wouldn't be too upset myself. Did you need anything else, sir?"

"No, that's fine. Thanks, Clare."

"No problem, boss. Oh, and your wife is on line two."

"All right. Thanks."

- - - - -

Emirene hadn't known what to do when she saw Martin leave his office. She knew she couldn't just run up to him on the street. He'd probably die of a heart attack. She didn't want to just let him walk off because he might not come back to the office today. So she followed him.

The sun was unbelievable. She grew faint and nauseous with only a few seconds of direct sunlight. In the early morning she had gone dumpster diving to find as many pieces of clothing she could to cover as much of her body as possible. The effect was that of an overweight bag lady carrying a pet crow. She kept the ragged hood of the coat she wore low over her head so no one would notice the strange markings on her face. She shouldn't have worried. The smell of the clothes kept people away with ease.

She followed him a half block behind and across the street. Jefferson was a wide street and extremely busy during midday, but she never lost sight of him. He looked like he always had, calm and put together, even though his tie looked a little loose around the neck. She watched him turn into The Roostertail and she found a spot for herself beneath a few trees across the street and waited. She managed to find herself in a sort of half coma. The daylight made her drowsy as well as sick and her body seemed to want to shut down until the light went away. She nearly missed him when Martin stepped out of the restaurant alongside Mort.

Oh, Mort. Poor Mort. The man had always been extremely overweight, but now he was on the verge of morbidly obese. Emirene chewed on her lips with worry. A man that size with a drinking habit and a high stress job like he had . . . How much longer was Mort going to last? She remembered Mort fondly as one of Martin's excitable, absent-minded partners. Hell, he had been doodling sketches during the case that had brought Emirene and Martin together. She had been the prosecution's police witness to a domestic abuse case and Martin had been the defense lawyer. She had gotten up on that stand cool and unfazed and left it the same way, even after Martin had pulled out all his lawyer tricks. She had run into him in the hall after the guilty verdict had been handed down. Emirene had laughed and said "I won, you lost." Martin agreed, and then asked her out to dinner. Mort had been the only person who could authenticate that this was really how their first date had come about. Mort had even stood up for Martin in their wedding.

She followed both men as they headed back toward the office. Emirene decided to head over to Indian Village so that she would be there to see which street he pulled onto, which house he lived in. Her excitement grew as she waited across the street from the historic village within the slums of Detroit. She sat beside a garbage can and thought about how he would be shocked at first, but then he'd pull her into his arms and cry. After that, everything would make sense again. It had to.

She didn't recognize the Bendz he drove, but she saw his face as he passed in it and quickly stood up to watch the car. It turned onto Iroquois Road and she quickly jumped across the street and turned down the block so she could watch his car pull into the driveway of a lovely three story Georgian Revival. Absolutely beautiful. It had a manicured lawn and even one of these little antique looking lampposts out front. She watched him enter the house and slowly drifted down the street. The crow squawked in irritation but she ignored it.

She slipped into the backyard first, looking around in amazement at the hanging plants and stone walkways through the perfectly kept backyard. There was even a stone bench in front of a three-tiered garden pond. A statue of a young child stood by it, holding his hand out and up as though hoping that, if he only stood long enough, a butterfly might land there. The soft smile that touched her mouth hurt, as though it might crack the skin around it. She put her hand against her stomach for a minute before looking back up at the house.

How could a pro bono defense lawyer afford this house? His office was still in the building marked Hamilton and Keenan, so he clearly hadn't gone to the dark side. And while she was thinking about it, how could he afford to run for a political office? Even just for city board, one needed money for a campaign. It didn't make sense. Unless he won the lottery or something. It was a long shot but it was the only thing she could come up with.

She peeled herself out of the street clothes she had acquired and made sure her robe was secured. It was smelling a little itself now, but it was better than keeping the rest of it on. She walked quickly up the back walk toward the back door . . . and then swiftly turned around and walked away. Oh, she was so nervous! What would he think? What would he DO? She was excited and terrified at the same time. She would tell him what happened, who had done those gruesome things to her and their child. He would hunt them down and help the prosecution bring them to justice and then . . . she could stay right? She could stay with her husband and be happy.

She turned back up to the house but moved to a window first. She wanted to see him again, to steel her resolve. What she saw through the window confused her into panic.

Martin was eating a fancy dinner at a fancy table in a room furniture probably cost more than their old house had. He was dining with a woman. She was petit and absolutely lovely. After an entire day, there wasn't a blond hair out of place on her head. The pearls she wore were probably real as would be the diamond she wore on her left hand. Her suit dress looked expensive, as was the coat hanging on the chair behind her.

She watched as her husband and the strange woman in his house ate their beans and their roast. They drank red wine and spoke casually and with familiarity. And then, when Martin stood to take the plates to be washed, he leaned down and kissed the woman. He leaned over her from behind, just like he had always kissed Emirene when she would be sitting and he would stand to leave.

Emirene found herself suddenly surrounded by bushes as her legs gave out and she sank to the ground beneath the window. She stared into the bushes. For a half hour, nothing that had anything to do with her stirred. She didn't blink, she didn't shift. She didn't breathe. She thought about the house. The Benz. The woman, the ring, the kiss. After the last hope inside her finally died, she thought about nothing at all.

It was two hours before the lights on the first floor went out and were replaced by a single light on the second floor. It was another half an hour before that one went out as well. She moved out from the bushes and went to the back door. She put her hand to the doorknob and pushed. There was a small cracking sound and the backdoor opened. She was immediately greeted by a quick beeping that told her to enter the security code quickly or pay the consequences. She tapped in the code to her old home and the alarm system accepted it, going quiet with one last contented beep. She stood just inside the back door for quite a while before she slowly began to move through the house.

The first room she found after avoiding the dining room was the den. There were two desks here, both high with paperwork. The walls were lined with legal books, floor to ceiling. A woman by the name of Anne Davenport had law certificates up. Another defense lawyer. One that got paid. She was beginning to see how Martin could afford this house.

The photographs held no interest for her after she found the one of Martin and the blond woman, Anne, standing in each other arms wearing a black tuxedo and a white dress, respectively. She simply decided she wouldn't look at any more pictures.

She nearly passed the living room by before she caught sight of the mantel over the fireplace. She moved across the carpet, her toes sinking into the plush wine-colored fibers and reached out to touch the triangular case prominently displayed in the middle of the mantel. It held a perfectly folded American flag with a small plaque inscribed with a name and date set into the wooden frame.

CPL. EMIRENE F. MENDOZA

UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS

AUGUST 20, 2005

At least Martin's new wife accepted the fact that Emirene had existed once. Or perhaps she avoided this room. Avoided Martin's past and pretended he had been hers all along. All negative thoughts of the woman living with her husband were gone the moment she saw what lay beside the triangular case. It was a small baby's rattle, gold plated. Emirene reached out and found her fingers trembling as she drew her fingers across the smooth surface. At least he hadn't forgotten that part of his past, either.

She swallowed and turned from the mementos of people long dead and left the living room, heading toward the grand staircase. She climbed it and silently walked down the hall, pausing only once outside a half closed door to listen to the sound of her husband making love to his new wife. Her eyelashes flickered a moment and then she continued on, never looking back.

She found the door to the attic in the ceiling of the second floor and pulled down on the cord hanging from it. The well-oiled ladder didn't so much as creak as it thudded down into the carpet. The darkness above was complete and she didn't feel the least amount of fear ascending into its depths.

Once she had pulled the attic door back closed, she realized that the darkness was not complete and she easily found the light switch. It illuminated a large attic divided into two sections. The first looked like a workshop. The second looked like an auxiliary office. She was happy that Martin had finally found a place to go to do his wood carving, but she found the office drew her attention more so she passed the workshop on her way to the desk.

The papers arranged on the desktop spoke of Martin's strange system of chaotic order. Nothing seemed to be where it should, but Martin would know where ever scrap was and why he had put it there. Along the near wall were photos of crime scenes. She wandered over and looked at them in interest. The back alley behind a party store. A street corner. The burnt remains of a house. She noted the DPD logo at the bottom. Martin had enough interest in these cases that he was able to snark some crime photos from the file room. Or paid someone to reproduce some for him. She didn't recognize the locations as any crimes she knew about, so they must have happened after her . . . incident.

Each crime scene had their own section on the wall, papers copied (illegally) from the Detroit Police files, a series of color crime scene photos. She moved to the first set, glancing over the glossy surfaces. Most of the pictures were of the crime scene behind the party store after a body was removed. The blood stains were marked with a number four. A bloody bat broken in half was number seven and eight. She had to lean down toward the bottom of the wall to see pictures of the body. A large white man lying on his stomach, his face turned to the side. He wore grey sweat pants and top with white tennis shoes. His head was beaten in so badly that the color of his hair was not recognizable, not to mention the features of his face. Ouch.

She glanced to the photos of the street corner, again having to look toward the ground to find pictures with the body in it. This one made her freeze. The black man laying on his back, half in the street, was a police officer. His still body was riddled with multiple bullet holes. Unlike the first picture, this man's face was immediately recognizable.

". . .Bateman!" Emirene stared in horror at the picture of her old teammate, gunned down in the street. She snatched the photo right off the wall and as she did–

–_the bullets smashed into her body like small explosions, tearing up organs and blood vessels, liquefying muscle and turning bone into shards. The hard concrete was almost soft when she fell to her back on the street._

_She struggled to breath but there was no where for the air to go but into her perforated lungs and back out of the bullet holes. In moments, the lungs refused to even inflate and lay flat and sealed like dead balloons in her chest. Her breath choked in her throat, stirring up the blood there into a thick prink froth that erupted from her mouth and glided gently down her cheeks._

_She felt a shadow fall over her and struggled to focus her darkening eyes as she felt her body growing colder and colder. The sun was behind the figure so no face could be determined, but she found the calm voice extremely familiar. _

"_Officer Bateman, is it? I can't really read your name badge anymore . . . I hope you're him or I've made quite a messy mistake. Officer Bateman? Terrence Bateman?"_

_She gurgled while somehow managing to slowly nod. The back of her head moved strangely against the ground, as though it was no longer round. As though the back of her skull no longer really existed._

"_Splendid," the voice that Emirene recognized as Goatee seemed to smile. "I hear you like your job more than most. It must be an honor to die in the line of duty."_

_She heard another magazine clip slap into place before the explosions in her body started anew–_

–Emirene gasped, finding herself on her knees in front of the make-shift crime board of her husband's making. The photograph of the late Officer Terrence Bateman was crumpled in her hand, crushed beyond hopes of redemption.

"Oh God, Terry . . ." She put the crumpled photograph to her face and cried with dry eyes for a moment before opening her eyes slowly and looking back at the board. She looked to the photo of the burnt house and saw autopsy photos at the bottom. There were multiple victims, all charred and blackened. Two large and two small. With a shaking hand she reached for the picture of the largest victim–

–_the smell of her own burning flesh filled her nostrils. What was worse was the screaming she heard. Why was she being left her ears? Why wouldn't her ears just burn off so she could suffer the last of her life in silence? So she wouldn't have to helplessly listen to the cries of her family as they burned alive in the house that had been their home._

_She felt her blackened skin crack open and knew that there was a man outside on their law with a large empty tank that smelled of gasoline and saddle shoes on his feet. She could almost see the man smiling as he lifted the empty tank and walk away, whistling to himself–_

–"Christ! Oh Christ!" Emirene found that she had dropped both of the photographs and was furiously patting herself down, trying to put out the flame that wasn't there. She had to force herself to stop the useless motion, curling her hands into trembling fists. Bernard. Bernard and Sharon and Bethany and Melany . . .the entire Brinker family burned alive. . .

With horrified numbness she lifted her face to the first set of pictures she had looked at. The picture of the man with his head bashed in behind the party story. "No . . . God no . . ." but she couldn't stop herself. She had to see it. It would be selfish of her to keep herself from this horror as well. She didn't pull the picture down but reach out and brushed her fingers over the glossy surface–

–_the man was standing on her neck. Her body was writhing about, trying to free itself, but the foot on the back of her neck, holding her face against the dirty concrete was not giving. She had tried yelling out but knew without being told that anyone who had heard her cries had run away without a second's hesitation. So instead she began to swear._

"_Your words are not polite, Mr. Fulton," the voice of the man standing on her neck was thick and a bit slow as though the man had to really think about them before he could form them in his mouth. "Lay still and I will not draw this out. I'm suppose to draw it out and make it painfully, but I won't if you will just lay still."_

_She tried to twist her neck. Tried to see the man standing on her. All she saw, out of the very corner of her eye, was a thick neck and the side of a bald head. "FUCK you, asshole! Get the fuck off me! I'm going to fucking ki–"_

_The baseball bat connected with her face with the sound of an overripe melon splitting open– _

–Emirene curled over and began to dry heave. Her throat wretched over and over again but nothing would come out. Not even the smallest spit of saliva. When the sick twisting inside her body finally receded, she shoved her hand into the pocket of the dirty bathrobe and grabbed onto the rosary for dear life. She felt the beads press into her hand and the chains bite a bit, but they brought a calmness over her that allowed her to move away from the wall and sit with her back to the side of Martin's desk. Her eyes rolled to the ceiling and she sighed.

Only three crime scenes decorated the attic wall. Hers was not one of them. Neither was Sean Callahan's. There was no doubt in her mind that he was dead too, in an equally horrific way. And of course there was no coincidence either. Five officers from the same SWAT team, dead. Murdered. She pushed herself to her feet and made herself approach the wall again. She read the homicide reports. Officer Bernard Brinker died August 8, 2005. Officer Kyle Fulton died August 27, 2005. Officer Terrence Bateman died September 4, 2005. She had been attacked after Brinker but before Fulton because she didn't remember any of these deaths. She didn't remember the date, but that meant all four of them had died within one month's time. Callahan no doubt fell in between them somewhere.

She wondered why her own file and Callahan's wasn't here, but it was easy to assume that Martin simply hadn't been able to get his hands on the information. It must have been extremely difficult just to get these three.

She pushed herself to her feet and began to wander around the attic office, reading papers about suspect interrogations and witness reports. She shifted through more pictures. Nothing was pointing directly to the men she knew were responsible. Bald guy. Saddle shoes. Goatee. Biondo. Biondo was on the suspect list but all interrogations turned up useless. The man was a lifelong crook. Of course he knew how to lie.

Finding a bunch of boxes along another wall, she pulled them down and opened the first one. She recognized her dresses. Her shirts and pants. Another three contained her baseball card collection. She looked at them fondly but put them aside and forgot about them. When she opened one box and saw the white hat and blue of her Marine uniform, she paused. She pulled the hat out and put it aside. She pulled the dress uniform out and put that aside as well. Beneath it was the fatigue coat and pants that she had spent 99 of her service time in. Her olive green uniform tank top. Her standard issue black boots. The Ass-kickers, she had recalled naming them. She pulled the tank top, the fatigue pants and the boots out. Without much thought as to why, she dropped the robe and began to dress herself.

The pants, baggy around her legs, still fit perfectly around her waist. The tank top just hid her autopsy incision and most of the open stab wounds. Sliding her feet into those old worn boots was like coming home. Warm and wonderful. Calming. The pants tucked into them and she knotted the boots tight. She stood with a sigh. The bathrobe had felt wrong. This felt very right. She stooped again and pushed through the box to find her dog tags and her full body tactical harness. She pulled the dog tags over her head and put her arms through the harness. She strapped it closed around her waist and across her chest, just above her breasts. This harness made her feel all squishy inside. It sported four holsters, one on each hip and one under each arm, as well as a long holster in the back for ones favorite rifle. About the utility belt were various little happy spots for knives, ammo and the like.

Another box revealed her old police uniform. From that box she lifted her badge, no doubt given to Martin after her death, even though the badge had already been retired. She clipped it onto her utility belt. In this box was also her police issue Baretta 8000F, empty. She pushed through a few more boxes before finding three boxes of .35 calibers and she quickly dropped the magazine and pushed the bullets into place. When she slapped the full clip home, the weight was perfect in her hand and the metal felt almost warm as though it was welcoming her after all their time apart. She slipped it into the holster at her right hip. The rest of the bullets filled three more clips and went into one of her ammo pouches. Two large knives slipped into her belt.

With each thing added to her body, she felt her calmness grow. She didn't realize it, but by the time she slipped those knives into her belt, her body had given up its guise of breathing. Her chest remained still and no air passed her lips or nostrils. The calm in her mind and body was so complete that she didn't feel the need to clean up her mess. She left boxes open, pictures on the ground. It didn't matter if Martin found his attic like this. She had more important things to think about.

She took a moment to step over to Martin's workshop. She turned on the desk lamp and looked down with a still face at the wooden sculptures that littered the table top. A small whistle. A rocking horse. A wooden rattle. Looking around she saw that all of Martin's whittled sculptures had been made for one person alone. His unborn child. She brushed her fingers over each piece before stopping on the small wooden rattle and picking it up. She caressed it, a small smile touching her lips. Then she attached the rattle to one of the empty loops in her utility belt. There. She was all set now. She had everything she needed.

She glanced up when she heard the tapping on the window. The crow, which she had left outside in the backyard, was perched just outside. It tapped impatiently on the glass with its huge beak and squawked. She put her hand up to still its impatience before bending down to the robe she had discarded on the floor. She pulled the rosary from the pocket and held it lovingly in her hand. Then she untangled it and put it around her neck. It settled against her breast, over the dog tags, over the harness strap, and it felt like she had just put on full body armor.

She turned to walk back to the attic stairs when she stopped and turned, slowly looking back at the crow perched outside the attic window. She tugged the lights off and walked to the window, crouching to push it up. It was painted shut, but the dry paint gave easily under her force.

She stuck her head out the window, looked down past the ledge. Two full stories below her was the front lawn. She didn't pause for another moment. She gripped the edges of the sill and pushed herself out of the window.

She landed silently on the grass below. The crow cried out and flew off above her, down the street. Standing slowly from her crouched position, Emirene slowly walked away from her husband's house and into the road. She knew who she was going to find. Now she just needed to find out where to find them while simultaneously filling her lonely holsters.


	5. Chapter 5

Most police precincts aren't very easy to break into but Emirene knew the Seventh like the back of her hand. She knew that the jail cells shared the basement with the well guarded armory. The first floor held row after row of desk officers and holding rooms. The third floor was home to three interrogation rooms, a few offices, and the file room. She also knew which windows could be shimmied and which grates were lose. Every angle watched by the security cameras was known to her. She had made it a habit of avoiding them before, back when she and Brinker use to sneak cigarettes out the second story windows when they were suppose to be guarding an interrogation room.

There was one interrogation room with a broken window latch and a rusty grate. Understandably, it had always been the least used room in the whole building. She doubted the department had gotten around to shelling out money to fix the problem, so she placed a healthy bet that it would be empty when she needed to get in. She moved easily past the outside security cameras and slipped around the back of the building.

For a brick building, the amount of foot and finger holds were few. She tested a few mortar lines as she looked around for a close tree but found her fingers easily broke through when enough pressure was applied. She doubted that this was because of badly made mortar. More likely she had well made fingers, stronger and less prone to pain than most. She took another look around and reached up, jamming her fingers between a pair of bricks high above her head. The simplicity she found in pulling her weight up by those few fingers was amazing. She had always had impressive upper body strength for a woman, but this was ridiculous. She braced her feet against the wall, more out of a need to do something with them than necessity, and threw her other hand up. She was above the first floor windows in under a minute. There wasn't even the slightest hint of fatigue in her hands or arms. Spider-man. Cool.

She secured herself beside the second floor interrogation room window before curling the fingers of her free hand through the grate and shaking it. Rust and dirt knocked itself loose and hissed down the brick wall to the ground below. With one yank, the grate came free with a pathetic sigh of protest. One stubborn latch stopped it from crashing earthward. Since it didn't hang in her way, Emirene moved her attention from the grate to the window. She could just make out a table and chair in the dark room beyond. She struck her palm against the window frame and few times and it easily gave to her prying. It lifted without a sound.

Her boots were silent as she stepped into her old precinct. She moved around the long table, her hand sliding along the surface. She found a round coffee stain. The air smelled slightly of old cigarette smoke. She cracked the door open and looked out into the well-lit hallway. Empty.

The light seemed to glare against her skin as she moved quietly down the hall. The lack of shadows was almost painful and she nearly retreated back into the dark interrogation room a few times. She passed every door-window carefully, checking to make sure each was safe. One was occupied but the man was furiously typing away at a report. She moved past undetected.

The file room was locked. A quick strike to the lock fixed that. The crow fluttered in over her shoulder and flew around the file room. The thrash of wings seemed deafening in the enclosed space. It flew around the towers of cabinets just barely missing crashing more than a few times on its rounds. It finally alighted on a tall grey filing cabinet and squawked in accomplishment.

She yanked open the cabinet and started rifling through the files, flipping quickly with skilled fingers. She started pulling relevant files and tossing them on the table behind her. She found Bateman's file and Brinker's file. And a file on Biondo. She found her own file and flipped through it right then.

Pictures of her house. One of the cracked family picture with the bullet hole in it. The fence post that had been abandoned in the open front doorway. There were pictures of the back door and lock that had been skillfully broken. Even pictures of the unpacked groceries on the kitchen floor, still in their paper bags.

The strangest pictures were the ones of her own dead body, bloody and mutilated on her cellar floor. She stared at them but avoided actually touching them. No reason to relive those. She already had every detailed memory echoing around her head at any given moment. Her mind turned to Martin and how he would have come home later that evening after a pressing day of work. He would have seen the open door and would have immediately known something was wrong. He would have run past the fence post and the destroyed family picture and into the kitchen. He would have known that his anal-retentive wife would never have left the groceries unpacked unless there was a reason for it. He might not have headed immediately to the basement, but would have run through the house, calling out her name. Each time he called for her, the panic would have doubled in his voice until he was screaming. Then the basement would be the only place left unchecked. He would have hurried down, perhaps stumbling over the cracked stair, shown clearly in this picture . . . and he would have seen his wife . . .

Emirene slammed her thoughts closed in that instant. She realized she didn't even want to think of what Martin would have done. What he would have said. How he would have screamed until he had no voice left. She closed her file and placed it on the table with the others before turning back to the filing cabinet to search for the rest.

- - - - -

The man who noticed that the file room lock was broken was a respectable man. He had been on the force for nearly thirty years now and could no longer remember his time in the police academy. It had been so long ago. It was like the memory of when he first rode a bike or first kissed a girl. Distant enough to be sweet without remembering any of the trouble and difficulty that must have gone along with it.

He put one hand on the knob while simultaneously moving his other to his gun. He opened the door silently and pulled out his issue piece. There was nothing amiss in his initial line of view so he began to move silently down the line of files cases, dark eyes darting around and taking in every detail.

When stepping into the aisle containing the lock breaker, the first thing he saw was the person at the end of the aisle, going through confidential files. The second thing he saw arrested the words in his mouth. The large crow, easily the size of a healthy cat, cawed at the sight of him and shook out its inky wings in greeting. Its skinny legs danced at its talons skittered around on top of the file cabinet.

Slowly, the experienced policeman lowered his pistol, his jaw going slack. ". . . Eric?"

The figure standing down the aisle straightened and closed the cabinet it had been looking through. "Hey, I know it was a joke around the precinct that I had balls . . ." it turned around with a smirk on its face. " . . .but that just hurts, Lieutenant."

Edward Albrecht wasn't aware that his hand had replaced his gun in its holster. He recognized the woman immediately. "Mendoza."

His dead second officer cocked her head to the side. The look on her face was slightly amused. "You seem a lot less surprised to see me then I would have expected, boss."

Albrecht looked back up at the crow which was hopping around like a happy little kid. "Me and your bird go way back."

"Then you probably know more about what's going on then I do."

"Maybe," Albrecht took a deep breath to slow his rapidly beating heart. He was too old for scares like this to be revisited on him. "I'm a captain now."

"Congratulations, sir." Emirene smiled. The copper skin tone he remembered had been replaced by one so white it almost had a blue tinge to it. He immediately recognized the dark marks down her face as both a sign of grief and a symbol of something much darker.

He nodded and ran a hand down his greying moustache and mouth. "Was it Biondo?"

"Damn right it was Biondo."

Albrecht sighed and moved down the aisle. He stopped at the far side of the table, arms crossed over his chest. "I figured it was. We all did, but we couldn't find a damn way to pin it on him. Whoever he got to do it, they were good. They left foot prints in blood but nothing more. We assume there's at least three of them."

She nodded. "Yes. There was three of them."

"Can you give me some descriptions? I can - -"

"I'll take care of them, boss."

Albrecht bit the inside of his cheek a moment before sighing. "Yeah, I suppose you will."

"I found all of our files but I haven't been able to find Callahan's."

He blinked. "That's because you're looking in the homicide files. Callahan isn't dead."

Emirene turned, stunned. "He . . .he is? But that doesn't make sense . . . if Biondo had the rest of us killed, why would Sean still be alive?"

"It does make sense," Albrecht shook his head sadly. "Biondo thinks Sean is dead. He was beaten to the point of death and left. He was able to get to a phone. They saved him at the hospital. Barely. They beat him so badly that he didn't remember the men who attacked him. He couldn't even tell us if they were white, black, Hispanic, Asian. Nothing. We decided to put him in the Witness Protection Program and leak it to the newspapers that he'd been killed, like the rest of you. Otherwise, Biondo would have sent his men after him again. Probably would have gotten the job done the second time around, too."

"Sean's alive," she breathed softly. "Maybe I should go see him . . ."

The response was immediate. "No. No, Emirene. You don't want to just show up after being dead for five years. It might be the last straw."

"What do you mean 'the last straw'?"

Albrecht shook his head sadly and sighed. "Sean recovered physically, but mentally . . . he lost all of you. He lost his partners and his best friends and he survived. He started blaming himself and tried to hurt himself a few times. Sean's not stable, Emirene. Even if he hadn't been relocated, we wouldn't have been able to keep him on the force. He went straight out of his gourd."

Emirene felt sick. She put her arms around herself and bowed her head towards the floor.

"Look, it's just best if you stay away from him. If you show up, I don't even know what he would do. He might think you're haunting him. He might just end up killing himself. Promise me you won't go see him."

She nodded. "You're right. I should just leave him in peace."

"Thank you, Emirene. Is there anything I can do for you?"

Emirene turned and grabbed a blank paper from a small table next to a copy machine. "You can lend me a pen."

Albrecht didn't question her. He gave her the pen from his pocket and watched in silence as she wrote out something in block letters on the blank paper. She handed the pen back to him and went to the copy machine. In a moment, she had four copies of what she had written. She folded them all together and put them in her back pocket. "Biondo's file says he's at Jackson."

Albrecht nodded. "Yeah. He had a stroke a few months back though. He's been in the infirmary, collecting bedsores."

She nodded. "Good. I'd be pissed if he died before I could 'ask' him where his hired men are."

Albrecht reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He tossed them at her. She snatched them out of the air reflexively. She looked down at them quizzically then lifted the look back to his face.

"It's the black Taurus. There should be enough gas to get to Jackson Prison and back. I get off shift at 6:00 a.m. I'll report it stolen then."

Emirene folded her fingers around the keys and nodded. "Thank you, sir."

"I assume your next stop was going to be the armory," he nodded to her empty holsters.

"Yeah."

"Give me ten minutes. I'll clear the way."

The bird squawked. Emirene spoke for them both. "Thank you."

Captain Edward Albrecht nodded. His back straightened and he lifted his hand up to the side of his head. Emirene stiffened visibly, then her face turned solemn and she silently saluted him back. He turned and left the file room. He would never see Emirene Mendoza again.

- - - - -

Emirene didn't know how he did it, but when she had stolen down to the basement, the weapon cage was unguarded and the key that matched the lock was laying on the counter. She didn't hesitate. She pulled the caged door open and stepped into the room that held all of the assigned weapons of the seventh precinct. She moved quickly, filling the rest of her holsters with pistols and her belt with as many rounds as it could hold. She took two more knives and one of the M-16s that she had used as part of the Special Weapons and Tactics unit. You never know when you're going to need a fully automatic, high powered, gas turbine rifle. Sometimes, those situations just jump out at you. Better safe then sorry.

Fully armed, she carefully made her way out of the precinct. She had to wait a half hour while the patrols changed and the parking lot emptied before she was able to find Captain Albrecht's car. She put the M -16 on the passenger's seat and the crow happily sat on top of it. She started the car, turned the radio off, and drove out of the parking lot, heading to I-94.


	6. Chapter 6

There were always some lights left on in the infirmary in case of an emergency. You couldn't have doctors stumbling around with needles in the dark if some guy's heart decided to stop after lights out. Still, there was enough darkness to satisfy the more lucid patients who couldn't take the glaring over-head lights twenty-four hours a day. Even their brothers-in-incarceration, cramped in their crummy cells, got the gift of darkness at night.

The moment Biondo woke up after his stroke, he had demanded to be moved to one of the dark corners of the prison infirmary. The light seemed too bright in his good eye. Being a patient of low threat, seeing as the old man could no longer sit up by himself, made his bed transfer go smoothly.

It had been long months of staring at the same wall, but Biondo figured it could be worse. The doctors were professional and the nurse that cleaned and fed him was ugly as sin but as gentle as an angel. The fear of a hit had gone down as well. His enemies seemed content to let the old man grow senile in a hospital bed, far from doing any harm again.

Biondo woke up late at night. His eye cracked open in confusion. He was awake for a reason but he couldn't figure out what it was. He usually slept into the morning with no restlessness. The drugs saw to that. But here he was, awake in the night and straining to discern why.

It was then that he noticed the woman sitting beside his bed. She sat on his bad side and he had to struggle a bit to turn his head enough to see her.

"Who're you?" he slurred through the good side of his mouth. "How'd ju git in?"

"I'm an old acquaintance. And with quite a bit of effort," she was sitting very still and he could make out nothing but the length of her dark hair and the slimness of her body. "It's rather funny that the easiest part was getting the night nurse to leave. Flashed a badge and he took himself right out of here."

"You'a cop?"

"I was," the woman said very softly.

"Whad'ya doin' here?"

"I have a couple questions to ask you, Mr. Biondo."

"No' wit'out muh lawyer ya don'."

The female cop who was no longer a cop didn't seem to hear this. "I'd like to ask you for some important information about the murders of police officers Callahan, Bateman, Fulton, Mendoza, Brinker and his family."

Vincent Biondo's eyes gleamed in the dim light and strained harder to make out the face of his interrogator. He tried to swallow and a little string of drool slipped from the dead side of his mouth and down the stubble of his cheek. He gurgled a bit before he could force his throat to answer, "dunno an'thin' 'bout that."

"That's a bold claim, considering all these murdered police officers was on the team that landed you here in Jackson."

"Neh . . . unfort'nate coincidence."

"Unfortunate indeed. But what if I said that there was an eyewitness who can describe three men of Italian-American background? A strong man with a bald head. A skinny man with a penchant for saddle shoes. A tall man with a goatee and a steady trigger fingers. And a positive identification by these very men that a Mr. Vincent Biondo was the man who hired them."

"Who's th' witness?" Biondo scoffed but it was clear that the descriptions of the men disturbed him.

"Me," the woman smiled.

"An' who're you?"

She leaned forward then and the light from a few beds down brought her face into focus above him. "Just a cop who enjoys her job more than most."

Biondo was old and crippled, but his mental facilities were completely intact, including his memory. His brain immediately recognized this woman as the one who had been his arresting officer. The one who had pointed a gun at him and snapped her gum with a delighted smile at her job well done. The same one who he had hired three men to kill, along with the rest of her SWAT team. A woman who, by report of his own hitman, was most definitely dead from multiple stab wounds and a gunshot to the head.

Biondo opened his mouth and took in a quick breath to scream out for help but Officer Mendoza's hand snaked out faster than he could act. She shoved all four of her fingers into his mouth, pressing his tongue down, and used her thumb to clamp his jaw into stillness. Her face was now inches from his and the whiteness of her face seemed to glow in the dim light. "Don't scream, sir. That will only make bad things happen."

The heart monitor was beeping faster now. It didn't seem to concern her. Her black eyes seemed to grow and shrink and he had trouble looking away from them. He tried to bite down on the fingers in his mouth but her grip was so hard and firm that his jaw was completely locked.

"I'm going to need you to do a few things for me, Mr. Biondo. Holding your mouth like this will not make it easy, so I'm going to let you go. If you try to scream, I will stop you again and break your good hand. Do you understand?"

He nodded, gagging weakly around her fingers.

She withdrew her fingers and stood up straight above him. "First I need some information. I need the names and locations of your three hitmen."

The man's jaw quivered. "I don' know . . ."

She placed her hand gently over his hand. She didn't squeeze, but the action was threatening enough.

"Okay," he growled quickly. "Okay. Strong man's name's Val'tine Costa. He's livin' wit' Vic'r Ventimiglia, the guy wit' th' stupid shoes. Dunno where'ey live. Ventimiglia work fo' his father in butcher shop. Dow'tow' 'Troit. Ventimiglia Meats. Early mornin' shift."

"Valentine Costa and Victor Ventimiglia. Good. And what about the man with the goatee? They called him Nico. Nico what?"

Biondo squirmed, "Dunno 'im. They brought'im in on their own. Dunno."

"Are you sure about that?"

Biondo nodded.

Emirene calmly grabbed his pinky finger and slowly started to bend it back. Biondo's body struggled pathetically and he cried out weakly. "DUNNO!"

She let his finger flop back to the bed. Fine. She'd just ask Mr. Costa and Mr. Ventimiglia when she got around to visiting them. "All right, Mr. Biondo. I need you to do one more thing for me and then I'll leave you in peace."

"Ww-hat?"

She reached behind her and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She held it in front of him and he could read large capital letters neatly written across the page. They read: I MURDERED BATEMAN, BRINKER, FULTON AND MENDOZA. Under the words was an X and a line. "I need you to sign this confession for me."

Biondo's red face went livid with anger. He sputtered in rage as she pulled out a ballpoint pen. He went dead silent when she clicked the pen open and drove it toward his face, stopping the point a centimeter from his eyeball. "I'd really appreciate if you'd sign this confession, Mr. Biondo."

He stared up at the pen tip that filled his entire vision and swallowed. "...okay."

The pen left his vision and he felt in being placed into his hand. She put the confession on his stomach and then lifted his hand to it. Slowly and painfully he scrawled what could just barely be recognized as his signature on the paper. When he was done, she took the pen back and placed his hand back at his side. She clicked the pen closed and it disappeared back into a pocket. She left the wrinkled confession note on his stomach. She then found the panic button by his hand and pulled at it until it was hanging out of his reach off the side of the bed.

Biondo opened his mouth to tell her to get the fuck out now, but as his teeth parted, her hand was there again, her fingers inside his mouth, choking off all movement and sound. She didn't say anything else to him but was calmly looking at his heart monitor screen. The beeps were rapid but steady. Not knowing what was happening, Biondo began to struggle weakly beneath her.

Emirene watched the monitor patiently. She watched it until she could feel the pulse inside her own body and echoing through her mind. When she truly knew his pulse intimately, she delivered a swift and severe elbow to his chest, directly between heartbeats. The next beat didn't come and the screen flat lined. Biondo was no longer trying to bite down on her hand but was gurgling and gasping around it, eyes wide and startled. His old muscles spasmed in shock and shook tremendously. But soon the shaking slowed and stopped. Emirene pulled her fingers from the dead man's mouth and wiped them across his arm.

After waiting by his side for another five minutes, she turned toward the infirmary doors. On her way out, she told the nurse reading a book outside that one of his patients seemed to be having a problem. When the man hurried into the infirmary, Emirene disappeared down the hall.


	7. Chapter 7

The business block was all by dead at four in the morning. Emirene moved past gated party stores and hair salons to the only light emanating from the stretch of inner-city shops. The hours sign in the window for Ventimiglia Meats read 'closed' but a light could clearly be seen glowing from the backroom of the store. The early morning shift was well on its way.

Emirene put her hand on the front door and paused. She looked up as her crow landed on a trash can to her right. She thought back to when she had first seen the creature, having thought it dead. Now it was hopping about the tin lip of the can in happy excitement. It seemed more energetic with each passing moment and she had notice a huge leap in its health after Biondo had his accident. She could have stopped to think on the mystery of this dark creature but somehow knew it was beyond her. She didn't have time to waste trying to figure out something that she was never meant to understand. She only had a few hours before the regular morning shift arrived.

She made short business of the door lock with the help of some well appreciated unnatural strength. She made no attempt to hide her break-in and was not disappointed by the lack of response from the Broken Windows neighborhood. She moved silently through the dark butcher shop toward the glow of the back room door. Pausing to listen, she heard cheerful whistling. Fucking morning people.

She nudged the two-way door open an inch with her boot and surveyed the scene. Thick concrete walls whitewashed. Stain-proof linoleum floor. Large stainless steel butchers tables through the middle of the room. She noticed a large metal door leading to the meat locker. Her whistler was standing at the industrial sinks lining the back wall, sharpening knives. Early morning duties. He probably loved sharpening those knives.

Her quick surveillance assured her that Victor Ventimiglia was the only employee on the red eye shift. It was a wonderful fact that made her happy down to her toes.

The vigilante moved into the room, a dark stain against all the white paint and stainless steel. She ran her hand along one of the tables as she walked beside it, her eyes locked on the back of Victor's head. When she reached the end of the table, she pivoted back around and retraced her steps, running her other hand along the table. She paced like a tiger in a cage and watched him from less then ten feet away.He didn't notice her.

She stalked behind him for nearly ten minutes, enjoying his utter ignorance, before he began to finish up and she made her move. He didn't know he had a massive problem until he put his last knife aside and felt a gun pressed solidly to the back of his head. His wiry form froze instantly.

"Put the sharpener down, please."

Victor slowly put the long metal rod to the side. His eye twitched over to the rack of newly sharpened knives but before he could get up the guts to grab for one, everything went black.

He woke up on a cold surface, hard and smooth beneath him. He blinked up at the overhead light and tried to move. It only took a moment of struggling to realize that he was being held down by chains across his shins, thighs, hips, shoulders and neck. He recognized the thickness and smoothness of his store's meat hook chains.

"Hey! What the fuck! Hey!" he yelled and struggled for a while before he tired and tried to look around. No one stood in his line of vision.

"15011 Whittier. Apartment C."

When the voice came from over his forehead, he strained to look above him. Nothing, but he knew she was there, just beyond his sight. "Lifted my wallet already?" he growled, yanking at the chains holding his arms out to the sides.

"Yes, But I only wanted your home address. I'll put it back in your pocket to make IDing you easier."

Victor fell into a moody silence, panic beginning to tingle up and down his back. He hated threats. Such a cheap way of demanding control over a compromised situation.

"Do you live there alone?"

He didn't answer.

"Fine. I'll just figure that out by myself, right?"

The dark humor in her voice made his skin crawl. Who was this bitch anyway? He didn't know any families in the city that sent women hitmen to do the dirty work. It was beneath low.

"If you're going to kill me, that's a bad idea. My father is close friends with the head of the Biondo family."

"Oh, you mean Vincent Biondo? Didn't you hear? He died peacefully in his sleep earlier tonight."

"Bullshit!" Victor spat. "That's all bullshit!"

"It doesn't matter if you believe me or not. By the time his death hits the media, you'll be beyond caring."

He growled and cursed, starting to struggle against the chains again. He felt the metal table beneath him absorbing the warmth of his body. He heard the squeak of rubber soled boots and felt her moving closer. There was a sudden glint above him that exploded into his eyes and forced him to flinch away. A moment later, his brain recognized light reflecting off the blade of a knife. It was one of his knives, the kind that cut fat away from meat so easily.

"So I hear you like knives."

Victor was no longer struggling but putting all his attention on the knife hoovering above his face. "It's a job."

"It's _two_ jobs," the woman corrected him.

The smile that touched his mouth was a bit brittle. "Yeah, two jobs. So what? You're mad at me because I did my job? That's fucking hypocritical."

"You have no idea what my job is, Mr. Ventimiglia," she said softly as the knife disappeared from his sight. He watched her walk along beside him and noted her camo and the impressive muscle of her arms. What the hell kind of a hit was this? When she turned back to him with a piece of paper and a pencil, her face only looked vaguely familiar. "I have something here I'd like you to sign, Victor."

She had a paper for him to sign? Ah Fuck. Geez. Thank god. He thought this shit was for real. Fuck. Whoever pulled this on him was gonna get a boot in the ass when he tracked him down though. Probably Nico. That prick always thought he was so smart. "What am I suppose to sign?"

"It's a confession," the soldier-lady said, holding it up so he could easily read it. His eyes narrowed as he did so.

"That's not funny."

"I never said there was anything funny about this. Are you going to cooperate?"

"No. Fuck no. Biondo's trying to find a fall-guy and it's sure as hell is not going to be me. Go tell him he can suck my dick."

"No thanks," the woman simply put the paper and pen aside. "You can tell him yourself."She reached up to his neck and he glared at her as she began to unbutton his shirt.

"What are you going to do now? Molest me? You can take the chains off, darling. I promise I'll hold still." He flicked his tongue at her as she pulled the ends of his shirt from his pants and finished the unbuttoning. She spread the shirt wide off the edges of the table so his torso was completely exposed.

"I'm going to give you some trade secrets. I use to be pretty handy with a knife myself when I was in the service. I always appreciated learning about how different people used knives. Have you ever seen an autopsy, Mr. Ventimiglia?"

"An autopsy? What the hell are you--"

"I know that some coroner offices are closed to the public, but others will let you in if you call ahead of time and schedule a day and a time. I've seen a few autopsies in my day. They're quite fascinating, really."

Suddenly the knife reappeared and he started to wonder if this really was a joke or not. It certainly wasn't looking like one.

"One of the first things they do is take a big ole syringe and stick into your eyeball to draw out the liquid. They can use that liquid to determine if you've had any drug abuse since the eyeball fluid tends to retain traces of drugs longer than any other part of the body. That shit can stay in there for months." She leaned over him and spoke into his face and again he got the strange feeling that he'd met this lady before. He still couldn't place her though. "Then they take a saw to your skull to check for brain damage. That's pretty cool because they peel your scalp forward and it hangs over your face like a piece of hairy fabric.

"But the most interesting part is always the torso examination," she smiled before leaning back from his face. He watched as she lowered the thin blade to his chest, just below his right collar bone. "They start here and draw to the center of the chest. Same thing from beneath the other collar bone." He felt her draw the blade very lightly across his skin and it sent his flesh into goosebumps. "Then from there, the cut goes down down down to your naval. That's called the Y-incision. H-incisions are used as well, but I'm personally fond of the Y-incision."

"This isn't funny . . ."

"No humor was suggested," she smiled before moving out of his line of sight once more. He struggled now more than ever but the chains were merciless. Her voice seemed flat and dead from a distance. "They use a knife to scrape the fat and muscle away from the bones of the rib cage. To open the rib cage they use, of all things, a gardening sheer. Crazy huh? Works like a charm though. . ." Back into view she came with a bone saw in her hand. She smiled a bit sheepishly. "Next best thing to garden sheers, I'm afraid."

" . . .What . . . what are you going to do?"

"I'm just returning a favor, Victor. Did you know that, as long as you don't cut the connective tissue between organs, you can pull out everything in a long line? Yup. From tongue to anus, one big long line. Hold on, I need to find a bucket."

Victor had begun to shake. The chains rattled against the sides of the table as he convulsed. This wasn't a joke. This bitch was crazy. He watched her put the bone saw aside. Clearly she didn't need it quite yet. She stood above him now with that knife. Her dark eyes glittered against her pale face. "After they weigh all your organs and do whatever tests, they stick all that in a trash bag and they toss it back inside your empty body cavity and sew you back up. They don't try very hard to make it look nice. You're not about to complain. They usually use a thick plastic thread just to make sure everything stays together so they can pull a suit on you and toss you in an open coffin for your family to cry over. It's very crude work. Sometimes I wonder if they don't just make the least experienced guy do the sewing, since it's the least important part and all."

With that, she caught the bottom of her tanktop with a hand and yanked the shirt upwards. "Not much artistry to it, I'm afraid."

Victor stared at the black plastic thread pushed through her dead skin to hold her very own Y-incision closed. The thick threads crossed haphazardly over each other, holding together skin but holding in nothing. Looking at her, he knew nothing remained within her chest cavity or torso.

The dry knife wounds scattered about her torso gaped open at him like dark, toothless mouths. In his shock, he recognized the unique stab pattern as his own.

Victor began to scream.

In moments, his screams of terror turned to screams of agony as Emirene dropped her shirt and, leaning forward, sliced his chest open in a V from collarbones to sternum. She sliced down through fat and muscles, being sure she could feel the knife bump over the bones of his rib cage. From there she dug in deep and dragged the knife straight down, slicing his naval neatly in half and stopping when she hit the top of his pelvis. "Hm, that's the difference between live and dead autopsies," she said to herself beneath his screams. "Lots of blood this way."

He was completely covered in blood now and he was spattering it quite a bit as he shook and convulsed and screamed. She felt it splash warm across her arms and face and felt a few drops touch her tongue. She turned her head a moment to spit the taste of him out and then turned back, pushing her hand into the cut and pulling one side of the incision back. The man had little fat on him so her job was mostly cutting the muscle away from the bone, which wasn't too difficult. It was done in moments with a few long sweeping slices. She yanked the flesh and muscle a side, tearing the ends of her incisions a bit, and put her knife down, reaching for the bone saw.

Victors screams were perishing in his throat, more blood bubbling out than sound. He was still with her though and staring at her with eyes so wide that he might have lost his eyelids somewhere behind them. What part of his face that wasn't splashed with blood was now as pale white as her own. His shaking had become so violent that it seemed to slow and was locking his body in place, his back slightly arched, pushing his dissected chest toward the lights above.

She looked up into those eyes, her face splashed with his blood, and asked softly, "you recognize me now, correct?"

His face twitched and his head shuddered in what could have been a nod.

She nodded herself and turned back to her work. He could hear the sound of the saw and feel the vibrations as it ground its way through his ribs, one after another.

By the time Emirene lifted the front of his rib cage away form his heart and lungs, the heart had stopped beating and the body had settled to the table, loose and relaxed. The face was still constricted in the memory of pain, frozen in such a way that insured Emirene that the funeral director would insist on a closed casket.

She stepped away and grabbed a hose from the sink. She rolled it over and turned it on, spraying blood out of the body cavity so she could more easily see what she was working with. Bloody water poured off the sides of the table and swirled around a floor drain, pushed into a depression in the linoleum. She gave herself a quick spray as well until most of his blood was gone. She couldn't tell if the water was ice cold or boiling hot, only that it was wet. She tossed the hose aside once her obscured view was cleared and continued her work.

Trying to pull all the organs out in a line wasn't as easy as she had described. Oh well, it was only her first autopsy. As the organs came out, she hefted them in her hand, examined them, cut some open. Once her curiosity disappeared, the organs were tossed into the waste bucket she had dragged beside the table, forgotten.

Once she decided she was finished, she tossed the knife and bone saw into the empty chest cavity and pulled out the xeroxed confession again. She unfolded and carefully set it just inside the body, on top of the murder weapons. No one could miss that.

Stepping over to the sink she washed her hands a final time and swished some water in her mouth, spitting it into the metal tub. Remembering at the last moment, she fished Victor Ventimiglia's wallet out of her own pocket, checked his home address again, and then placed it back into the pocket of his jeans.

Outside, the morning was beginning to lighten. Emirene decided to find a place to lay low until night fell once again and started off down the street. High above her head, the crow flittered and danced on an air current and its cawing sounded of laugher.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Sorry about the criminalistics reference (Broken Windows). Since Emirene would be approaching her situations with a mind trained in criminological/sociological evaluation, it was too tempting not to put it in. For those curious, Broken Windows refers to a theory on neighborhood disintegration. The more broken windows in a neighborhood, the more windows will end up being broken, since it's obvious that the neighborhood does not care enough about itself to try to rectify any problems. While up kept neighborhoods tend to lead to the displacement and relocation of crime, Broken Window neighborhoods tend to attract crime. --Lore_


	8. Chapter 8

Dawn found Emirene staring at the front door of her husband's Indian Village home. Why had she come back here? Any of the abandoned houses and store fronts she had passed on her way here would have been more than worthy for her to hide in. Yet she had kept walking until her boots sank into the lush front lawn of the Pearson residence. She wanted to turn her back and find another place but she couldn't shake the feeling that she had just arrived home.

Scaling the side of the house proved to be a simple task and Emirene let herself back into the attic the way she had left it, through the front window. Everything was as it had been. Martin hadn't been up here since she had left the night before. She picked up the pictures she had ruined and gently placed them in the trash can before she wandered over to the storage area, pulling off her belt and harness with a sigh. She didn't allow herself to think on the night. Too much thought might render her impotent to finish the job that she had found set before her.

She folded herself down onto the wooden floor and began slowly going through the boxes of belongings that once were hers. She laughed over pictures and refolded pants and dresses. She began opening a box of her old books when she heard the ring of a phone through the attic floor. She paused and listened. The tone stopped in the middle of the second ring.

She turned back to her box of books but only a moment later she heard hurried steps moving down the upstairs hall toward the pull down ladder to the attic. Like a flash she closed the book box and tossed the things she had taken out of other boxes back and shoved the lids on. Her keen ears heard the smooth movement of the ladder as it was pulled down and heavy footsteps climbing them quickly. She kicked the boxes into a semblance of stacked order and disappeared behind a wooden brace just as Martin put his bare foot onto the attic floor. He quickly turned and pulled the door shut behind him and hurried past his work bench to his desk.

Emirene peered carefully around her cover and saw Martin in a pair of boxers and his silly old tattered bathroom as he began to shuffle through all the papers and files on the desk. He had not yet noticed the pictures missing from his Wall of Crime. He was hurriedly tapping a number into his cell phone with his left hand while his right moved papers around. A few manila files dropped off the side of the desk and to the floor, unnoticed.

"Sean!" Martin cried into his cell phone when the other side picked up. "Sean, it's Martin. Martin Pearson. Did you hear?"

Emirene felt a shiver go up her back upon hearing her old partner's name.

"Did you - - yes, I know it's 6:30 in the morning. Did you hear? Did Albrecht call you too? Biondo's dead!"

The excitement in Martin's voice as he held the phone between his ear and shoulder and shuffled files around made Emirene's skin glow with sudden warmth. He finally found the file he was looking for and sat down at the chair, throwing it open, and shuffled some more. He had bed-head.

"No, yes, no, he was reported dead early this morning, at about two. A prison nurse found him after he'd gone into cardiac arrest. And there was another man. Ventimiglia I think. Victor Ventimiglia," he was scribbling the name down on a random piece of paper as he said it. "Yeah, I haven't heard of him either. He was found dead this morning too, about an hour ago, but it wasn't a heart attack.It was a clear homicide. Albrecht wouldn't tell me the details but, get this, there was a paper at both crime scenes."

Emirene bit her lip. They had sure gotten onto Victor's case fast. She wondered if he had still been warm when the first morning shift person found him.

"No, paper, paper," Martin was saying, laughing breathlessly and scratching the stubble on his left cheek. "You know, paper, made from trees. A piece of paper at both scenes and they both said "I killed Bateman, Brinker, Fulton and _Mendoza_" and it was signed, Sean. Biondo fucking signed the paper before he died! He admitted it! No, the one at Ventimiglia's scene wasn't signed, but it was there and I think we can bloody well assume what that means. He must have been one of the hitmen. No, I don't think your name was on it. Yeah, so whoever made Biondo sign it and whoever killed this Victor guy knew you didn't actually die from the attack. Yeah I know it's impossible."

Emirene's eye caught on her harness which still lay where she had dropped it beside the boxes. If he looked over in this direction, he would see it. Fuck. She looked around the beam at him again. He was completely absorbed in the conversation. She silently lowered herself to her belly and pulled her way to the edge of the boxes. She glanced around them to see that Martin was still hollering joyfully into the phone. She looked back at the harness.

"What are you TALKING about! If this vigilante is knocking off the right people, this could be the biggest break in our case in four years! No, Sean, listen to me would you!"

Emirene licked her lips and glanced over once more before quickly reaching out and grabbing the harness, dragging it back to safety behind the boxes. She froze then and waited to hear if he had noticed her movement. When he kept chatting on, she let out a breath and slowly stood back up, pulling the harness on and securing it.

She heard the scrape of his chair as he pushed it back and stood. In a moment the sound of his bare feet could be heard coming in her direction. She stiffened her back and sucked in her gut as though it was going to make her smaller. She stood as still as she could, just barely hidden behind the wooden strut.

"Can you imagine," Martin was still talking into the phone as he went down to his knee in front of the boxes of Emirene's things. He braced the phone between his ear and shoulder again as he took the first top off. "Well you know what, I would have demanded the death penalty anyway for what these guys did. They took my wife. And they took . . . my . . .what the hell?"

Emirene pinched her eyes closed. Shit. He had noticed things missing from the box. She heard him tear the cover off another box and ruffle around inside. He swore again. "...Sean, can I call you back?" and he hung up before waiting for a response. He dropped the cell phone and began to actively push his way through the boxes of his dead wife's possessions. His swearing became louder, more insistent. He started listing off the things he noticed missing. ". . . Harness . . . fatigue pants . . . and tank? Boots. And gun? The fucking gun . . ."

She heard him move closer, pushing through the boxes that were almost directly behind the strut she was using to hide her presence. She heard a box lid go flying. Now, each missing article was torn from his throat painfully. He sounded near tears. ". . .her badge. . . and, God . . . her dogtags? God. . ."

He was so close now. Close enough that he could notice her if she made the smallest movement. A few more inches over and he'd see the toe of her boot without much effort. Then her leg, hip and arm . . .

Martin jumped up in surprise when a violent tapping exploded from the other end of the attic. He looked out past his desk to the low window and saw a huge black bird perched just outside, tapping obsessively on the window, its huge black wings fluttering like crazy. That tattoo of sharp sounds was constant and growing louder as the crow battered its beak against the glass.

"Hey! HEY!" Martin hurried back to his office area, waving his arms. "Hey, stop it, you're gonna break the fucking glass. Get!"

Emirene didn't waste a second of her partner's brilliant distraction. With a burst she jumped and forward rolled across the width of the attic. She wiggled herself behind some old file boxes and an unused mattress. Once there she froze again, listening and waiting. The tapping on the glass stopped and Martin only continued to swear a moment longer before she heard him walk back over to the boxes. He stood there a moment, perhaps staring down at the boxes. Then she heard him scoop his phone off the floor and raise his voice.

"Anne!"

His yell was calm and collected but Emirene could hear the fury fuming beneath it. Uh-oh, poor wifey. Em tried not to smirk in bitter pleasure. She heard him walk off, his feet heavier than usual, making the floor shake a bit. When he left the attic, she heard a muted conversation that clearly turned into a muted argument. Since she couldn't hear any words she decided not to try. She curled herself up and relaxed on the cool ground behind the mattress. She had to wait until night fall before she could trying finding her way to Whittier road on Detroit's East side.


	9. Chapter 9

(Um . . .Warning: this one is pretty gross too. Heh.)

It was normally a fifteen to twenty minute drive from Indian Village to Whittier on the east side of the city, and that was ignoring the significance of red lights, which most Detroiters did. Somehow, it only took Emirene thirty minutes to get there on foot, albeit at a dead run. She stayed one road off of Mack Avenue going north and one road off East Outer Drive going west until it turned into Whittier after crossing over I-94. Honestly, it should have taken her five hours to travel the distance on foot but somehow she was there, none the worse for wear or breath, as the evening life of Whittier began to give way to the nightlife.

She found the squat apartment building in one hell of a decrepit neighborhood. It was the sort that only had two floors; the ground floor apartments and the basement apartments below them. Just out front, a skinny crack whore flaunted her sickly figure to the passing traffic. A street light down, a juvenile scored a nickle bag. Emirene settled herself onto the roof of a copy shop across the street and watched the neighborhood business trade hands and sell itself. Not long ago, she would have felt the need to act but the petty crimes of the living no longer impressed her. She simply watched the entrance of the apartment building for activity. People came and went without peaking her interest until a black and white pulled up in front around midnight. She leaned over the edge of the roof, watching with interest. The officer driving stepped out and let a large man out of the back seat. The cop spoke calmly to the man a moment before patting the large man's arm and getting back into the patrol car. The man stood at the curb and watched the police car pull off down Whittier before turning toward the apartment complex. Seeing that it was time, Emirene stepped back from the edge of the roof and jumped down into the alley behind the print shop.

She moved around the building and crossed the street. She took the stairs beside apartment 3 down to the basement apartment marked C. She pulled the badge off her belt and knocked on the door. She held her badge up to the dirty peephole so that all that could been seen was the shiny metal of her official police ID.

"Who is it?" a deep voice came through the door.

"Officer Mendoza. I just wanted to ask you a few more questions about the death of your roommate, Mr. Costa."

There was a long moment of silence before she heard two deadbolts being clicked aside. The door opened a crack and the large man looked down at her as she lowered her badge. ". . . You look strange."

"Yes, I'm sorry. I'm on my way home from an office costume party," she smiled reassuringly even as her body started to ache in remembrance of the pain this man had inflicted on her. "It's really important that I speak to you about Mr. Ventimiglia."

Again there was a moment of silence before the door was opened further. Valentine Costa moved his large body out of the way to let the small police woman into his apartment. It was as crappy as she had assumed it would be. The main room included the kitchen, the living area and it had a bed crammed into a far corner. Two doors lead to what she assumed was an official bedroom and a bathroom. No windows. The room was furnished well enough and boasted a high definition flat screen TV as its pride and joy near the shabby couch.

"I've been down at the precinct station all day," Valentine said quietly as he closed and locked the door behind her. "I don't know anything more than what I already told them."

"I understand that, sir, and I'm sorry to bother you about the loss of your friend, but I need to discuss a few things with you."

Valentine sighed and walked toward the kitchen counter to take a seat. "Do you want coffee or something?"

"No, thank you. I'm fine."

He poured himself a mug of cold coffee and brightened it up with far too much sugar. He took a swallow, grimaced, and looked at her. "That's a nice rosary."

Emirene put her hand to her chest but couldn't force herself to smile at him. "Thank you. Would you mind telling me what you were doing before, during and after the time of Mr. Ventimiglia's death?" She moved toward the extra chair but she did not sit. She had left all but one of her guns on the copy shop's roof. One gun would pass for a police interview. Besides, all she would need was one bullet.

"Well, before and during, I was asleep. Vic works early in the morning and I'm always asleep when he leaves," his voice dropped into a tired monotone. No doubt he had explained this a multitude of times today in a more professional setting. "I didn't wake up until the police called me about . . . about it."

"So you were asleep the whole time."

"Yes'm." He was a large man but very soft spoken. If she hadn't known better, her first impression of him would have been large but gentle and kind, if a bit slow.

"Did Victor know any people who didn't like him? Someone who you think would have a reason to hurt or kill him?" She was utterly amused at the ridiculousness of this question.

Valentine shifted a bit in his chair and concentrated on his coffee mug. Her interrogation experience told her that he was about to tell a lie. She had been expecting it anyway.

"No one I know of, ma'am."

"I see," Emirene kept her voice even and polite. "How long have you known Mr. Ventimiglia?"

"Oh, all of my life. We grew up together. He was my best friend," he was so quiet and distraught.

"I'm very sorry for your loss. Now, I'm not sure how much of his death was explained to you, but it's quite clear to us that this was a premeditated homicide, very likely planned for personal reasons. There is a large chance that the person who did this to him was someone he knew. We've been compiling a list of his family and acquaintances and a name has come up that I need a little clarification on. Do you know anyone by the name of Nico?"

Valentine blinked and looked up, startled. "You mean Nicolas Biondo? Do you think he did it?"

" . . . Biondo?" Emirene was unable to stop her left eye from twitching slightly. Valentine didn't notice.

"Yeah. I don't think he did it. His dad just died the other night. He's very sad over it. He wouldn't kill someone when he's sad like that."

"Are you saying that Nicolas Biondo would be capable of murder under normal circumstances, when he's not grieving over the loss of his father?" So that was why Biondo feigned ignorance about the third hitman. He was protecting his son.

The big man began to fidget. He rubbed his bald head nervously. "No no. No, I didn't mean that. I'm just saying, why would anyone kill someone when they have more important things to think about, you know?"

"Perhaps Nicolas Biondo thought it was Victor who killed his father," Emirene insisted quietly.

"What? No. Victor wouldn't kill Mr. Biondo. Besides, I heard he died of a heart attack or something. Natural causes, you know. He was in prison."

"Hm, I see," Emirene rubbed her lips as though she were pondering something deeply. "Still, I think I should question Mr. Biondo. Do you know how I can get in contact with him?"

"Uh . . . no. . . but his father's funeral is tomorrow. He's gonna be buried at Mt. Elliot Cemetery at noontime I think."

"I see. Thank you. I'll try to speak with him after his father is put to rest."

Valentine nodded.

"Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Costa. I really do appreciate it," she smiled at him. Clearly, he was glad that this interview was drawing to an end. He was about to get up and escort her to the door when she put her hand up quickly, "Oh wait, I wanted to ask you about one more thing."

"What's that?"

"I was wondering if you knew anything about the multiple homicide of four Detroit Police Officers about five years back."

Valentine blinked his large, dark eyes slowly. " . . .Why are you asking?"

Emirene remained casual. "Well, a piece of paper was found on Victor's body. A similar one was found on Mr. Biondo in his hospital bed. Would you like to see it?"

The look on his face said, no, I would NOT like to see it. She was going to show him anyway. She moved her hand behind her back, secretly pulling the snap of her holster loose as she went. All it would take was a quick draw and it would be over. She pulled out a folded piece of paper and held it out to him.

For a moment he didn't take it. When he finally did, she noted that his large hands were nearly twice the size of her own. He could easily crush every bone in her hand if he felt the urge. He unfolded it slowly and she watched him as his eyes moved over the words.

I MURDERED BATEMAN, BRINKER, FULTON AND . . . MENDOZA . . .

She didn't even get a chance to reach for her gun. Valentine lunged so suddenly out of his chair and toward her that she didn't even know the fight had begun until she hit the ground, crushed between the dirty carpet and his large body. The chair she had been standing in front of never stood a chance. It crashed at her side and broke into pieces. Her oxygen supply was suddenly cut off as his large hands wrapped themselves around her neck and squeezed. At least it would have been cut off, if she needed oxygen in the first place.

"You're suppose to be dead!" Valentine throttled the small woman, his incredible strength bolstered even higher by confusion and fear.

Emirene threw her hand to the side and grasped around until her fingers found a broken chair leg. She gripped it and swung upward. The wood cracked in half against the side of Valentine's bald head. The man cried out and fell to the side, releasing her from his attack. She rolled quickly the other way and sprung to her feet. "Well, that _is_ what the coroner's report said."

He recovered quicker than she would have expected him to. As she was pulling her gun from its holster, he threw himself at her again, this time a large, meaty hand going directly for her piece. He grabbed a hold of her and they struggled a moment before he grabbed her wrist with one hand and moved the other to just below her elbow. With a mighty roar, he snapped the bones of her forearm in two. She cried out in shock and yanked away. He let her go, more interested in the gun she had dropped.

Emirene backed up until her hips hit the kitchen counter. She looked at her forearm. Halfway down, it was bent at a right angle, as though she had a second elbow. The most shocking part, however, was the pain. Or the lack thereof. Sure, there was pain, but it was only an echo. Like the memory of a horrible injury long since past instead of a current injury. She looked at her ruined arm in amazement.

Valentine retrieved the gun and looked up just in time to see the female police officer who should, by all rights, be rotting in her grave and watched in horror as she used her good hand to snap her arm straight again. He could hear the grating of the broken ulna and radius crunching back into place.

He was shocked. He was revolted. He was going to be sick. He dropped the gun.

In mere seconds she could feel the strange itch of her bones mending back together. The wormy movement as her muscles and tendons reattached themselves. In under ten seconds, her arm was as good as new. She wiggled her fingers and then shook her arm out, dropping it to the side.

"W . . .w-what ARE you!"

"I wish I knew," Emirene said with true sincerity. Then she attacked.

Valentine's body nearly went straight through the wall when Emirene smashed into him and threw him through the air. Pictures frames shattered and hit the ground just as he did, showering him in glass. She stepped over her discarded gun, no longer feeling the urge to use it, and picked him up by the collar of his shirt. This man was a brute and a cold blooded killer. A single bullet to the head was too merciful.

"I killed Biondo," she confessed and turned, throwing him through the air and into his expensive television set. Both he and the HD went over the other side of the table and rolled to a crashing stop against the bed. She moved around the couch and table to stand over him. "And I killed Victor too."

Valentine looked up at her though the blood running into his eyes. His pain was suddenly overshadowed by his pure rage. He leaned forward and grabbed her ankle and yanked, pulling her feet out front under her and sending her to her back on the ground. He was on her in an instant. He throttled her with one hand and began to punch her face in with the other. He hit her and hit her and felt bone crunch under his huge fist but no blood was coming out. Flesh tore away from muscle and still no blood. He tried hitting her harder, DEMANDING blood.

She had gone limp under him. Surely she was dead now, but he continued to pound her face into the back of her head. Tears mingled with the blood on his face and he screamed as he pulverized the woman's face beyond recognition.

When it seemed like there was nothing left to punch, he slowed and stopped, fisted raised above his head as he looked down at the bloodless mess below him. She had killed Vic. Now she was dead. She should have been dead before, but she was certainly dead now. Oh. What was he going to do with the body? He dropped his hand and sat there on top of her, thinking of what to do.

He didn't get far beyond wondering if he had any trash bags left before the woman's limp hands suddenly flashed up to his face, fingernails digging into the flesh of his right cheek and left eye. He screamed as the fingers scraped downward, taking one eye with them and tearing chunks of flesh and fat away. Dimly, through the blood pouring into his remaining eye, he saw movement in the mound of flesh and bone that had been the woman's face. He grabbed hold of what was left of his wits and sanity and threw himself off of her, crawling across his carpet toward the door, leaving a trail of blood behind him. He shrieked at the top of his lungs, both in English and Italian, for help.

He heard movement behind him. He _felt_ the movement. The woman was slowly getting to her feet. Oh God, oh hell! Oh God please someone help me! She didn't come after him immediately but walked slowly to the far corner where he left his favorite aluminum bat. Oh GOD!

When he reached the door and realized that the deadbolts were still in place, he pulled himself up the door, reaching for the locks. The instant his hand touched the metal, the aluminum bat smashed his fingers between the two. He howled and dropped his hand back to his chest, curling up in a ball to protect what he knew he could not protect.

The next strike came to his side, breaking ribs. She hit him until every rib was broken and then move on to the other side. When his screams began to annoy her, she hit him in the head until he stopped his hollering.

She could have stopped then, but she didn't. The faceless woman beat the bald man's body until she had broken as many bones as she knew existed. She beat him until nothing solid remained.

When she found that she had enough of her face back to speak, she went back for the paper that had set the man off in the first place and sighed, "it's nothing less than you deserve."

She carefully refolded the paper and slid it into his pants pocket. She looked down at the body a moment before turning to retrieve her gun. She touched her face. It seemed a bit off but it was still moving and reconstructing itself. Curious, she walked toward the closed doors and found a bathroom behind one of them. In the mirror, she watched as the last features of her destroyed face were put back into place.

The most interesting thing was that the tears were back. Every bit of her flesh had been torn and ground down, yet those dried black tears were there, the same as they had been. She reached up and rubbed her finger against one of the dark makeup lines. Not even the smallest smudge appeared. It was like the lines had been tattooed into her face. She frowned but was not surprised. She doubted anything would ever surprise her again.

Well, there was no reason to stay any longer, especially after he had made such a ruckus. She left the bathroom and nudged the body out of the way so she could open the door. She was met by a startled hooker who had her fist raised to knock on the door. She had heard a man screaming and had come to see what all the hullabaloo was about. She stared at Emirene for a second before screaming for reasons she didn't really understand. Emirene understood. Somehow this stranger knew that everything about her was wrong, and it terrified her.

She moved past the screaming woman without a word and raced up the stairs. She was already across the street and making her way around the back of the copy shop to retrieve her weapons by the time the woman actually found the dead man inside his apartment. Emirene was long gone before the police sirens began to wail in the distance.

(Have you every written something violent and then, after rereading it, sat back and said "Wow, Laura (or insert your name here), . . .what the fuck is wrong with you?" Yep.)


End file.
